Under Construction - MHWA Retreat

I joined this group as a way to hopefully garner some support for my own mental health issues. My social anxiety disorder has kept me away, until, this question. I always thought that other people had it worse than myself because my meds felt like they were working for me, and in truth, they are helping me quite a bit. I didn't always suffer obviously with my issues until a life-changing trauma happened about seven years ago, it "Triggered" my symptoms on a massive scale and put me into therapy and caused me to go on all kinds of medications on a daily basis. So I know how my life would be different had that trauma never happened to me. This question reminded me that I could see what life would be like without most of my issues. The biggest difference that I see is how much of a risk taker I used to be compared to now. The risks I used to take got me things, a good job, a good car, girlfriends, money, friends. All the things that make life worth living. Now I don't take a lot of those risks out of fear. What fear? I don't know. Back then I was in the security field be it a guard or an officer, I was good at my job, I just had a lot of different jobs, but would always try to stay in that field. Now, because of all my different disabilities, I am moving into the teaching field working with special ed children. I am just now starting on that path. I feel it will be a very rewarding field for me to get into. My day-to-day life will look a lot different in the fact that instead of guarding some type of asset or people, I will be helping to nurture a child to help him/her have a better life. I have no family and it looks like I never will, so if I can't have kids then at least I can work with them on a daily basis. My friends? Well, I have a pretty good set now and I could still see that if I hadn't had these stupid disabilities I might have a bigger circle of friends.
My life would be so much better without these issues in all the above-mentioned ways, but also that I might have a better sense of accomplishment for my life if I didn't have these issues. I still read a lot of posts made by others here and think sometimes that I don't belong here because some of the things that everyone else seems to be dealing with seem a far cry from what I'm going through, but once again, I can still see the past of where I have been and what my life WAS like to what it is now and am reminded of just how bad things have gotten for me comparatively speaking; and in seeing that I'm not sure that my life would be worse without these disabilities. With things like social anxiety, generalized anxiety, Bipolar 1 and 2, schizoaffective disorder, PTSD, and a myriad of other stupid things to tack on to all that I can't see how life could be worse without them. So there you have it.