I feel like an old man at age 20.

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Well, the title pretty much sums it up, but yeah. I feel as though I can never relate to the youth around me, regardless of the circumstances. Like, I don't feel comfortable around them, and they seem, basically like immature barbarians, especially in a group setting, if that makes sense. My life has gone pretty, well, bad, and I've seen and gone through alot. In a lot of ways, I'm probably very beyond my years, then in other ways, I'm still a hormone filled idiotic 20 year old. It's an odd paradigm, pretty contradictory, really.

I've never really understood how the youth around me like, worked. When I was in elementary school, I looked up to the high school and college aged people, and thought they were really cool. I'd talk to adults so much as a kid, my parents got mad at me for talking to strangers, but the adults were always the ones that knew everything and were usually quite nice to me, whereas kids were usually much more mean to me.

People seem to automatically think I'm older by the way I act, too. I was 18 or 19, and I was offered complimentary wine at a restaurant, I declined, but yeah. I was wearing a sweater and dress pants, and came in alone and I guess was polite (as most people tend to say I am, I think most people tend to say I'm polite but odd) and I did have some facial hair, but yeah, they apparently thought I was at least 21. I had one person seriously ask if I was 30, like ask me a couple times like "are you sure?" He apparently couldn't believe I was 20.

One counselor I talked to, when I brought up my Aspergers she said "I don't believe this bit of 'I have Aspergers so I have bad social skills,' you have better social skills than most kids your age, most kids your age are like, atrocious, and like drama, and you just aren't like them." Which is wonderful and all, but doesn't terribly help me, as since I am my age, the rest of the world expects me to be like those people. Even if it's a case sort of like the the Twilight Zone where everyone else has pig faces and I'm the normal one, the rest of the world still has pig faces.

And now, as an adult, it's still the same. Like, at probably the most social place I go to currently, the ice skating rink, adults strike up conversations with me, and I with them, and meanwhile, kids (ie, people my age range) don't talk to me like at all usually, and I usually don't with them. Usually any interaction with adults is pleasant, and with kids, it's...not. Or it's just dumb and the kids will talk about something dumb or disregard any advice or whatever. But even among kids, when they do try to be nice, like for example, it was a fairly empty day, and like 3 people came to the rink and were in rentals and playing tag with eachother, and we talked a little bit, I was practicing specific things. Anyway, they just randomly go up to me while I'm practicing stuff alone, and tag me and I pretty much didn't like it at all, and didn't join their game. I didn't want to, I didn't really "get it." To put this into perspective, as a kid, as soon as I learned to actually swim, I got out of the "kids pool" that was heated and had all the toys and stuff, and went to the adult lap pool. I didn't like all the kids trying to play Marco Polo and splash me and whatnot, and I just would swim for hours on end alone, swimming laps by myself, like an adult. In fact, I believe a few times, the life guards would just let me to go "adult swim" as I never caused any nuisance or problems or anything like that. I'd just swim laps endlessly, as adults did.

But yeah, I find my relational ability with youth to be very...bad. Like I don't feel really any solidarity or anything with my generation. Obviously, I have friends my age and all, but I feel like I can only keep individual friends, and once it becomes a "group" affair, then everything gets thrown out the window.

So...I don't know terribly what to do about this. I know as I get older, I'm thinking it'll remain the same. As I get to, say, 30 years old, I'm gonna find them unrelatable, too. I think the problem is just going to carry over to my whole generation as long as I live. So, I'm wondering if anyone could relate to this type of thing I'm describing or have any advice or something. Is there a way to "break in" to the culture of older folks, ie, finding a job where I can work around mostly older people, or something?

Thanks for reading my long post and have a good day.

Hey 1000Knives,

I had similar feelings in my twenties (I'm now almost 46). My roommates used to call me "old man" despite the fact that I was only 25 years old. My interests, mannerisms, attire, etc. had old man written all over them. I had no desire to go out on weekends drinking until I couldn't see straight. My interests were, and still are, books and music and I would spend most of my time on those things. I played in a band but that consisted of, going to the show, playing and then going home. Not much hanging out for me. I preferred the writing and recording aspect of it.

For me, it helped to have friends who were anywhere from 10 to 20 years older than me. I found it easier to relate to them and still have them as friends to this day. One of my first jobs was working at a small video store run by a guy 20 years older than me and we immediately hit it off. In my next job there was a wide range of ages, but inevitably, I made friends with two people who were 15+ years older than me. I wanted nothing to do with the people my age. Mrs. Cochise and I have a teenage daughter who is an aspie. She comes home from school and talks about her teachers - what they were like in high school, their families, interests. I remarked at her last parent/teacher conference that we know more about the personal lives of her teachers than we do of her student friends.

I'm not sure I offered any helpful advice, but I can definitely relate to what you wrote about.

Take care of yourself.
Cochise

Redacted

If you can, don't think in terms of age groups, but of common interests & seek out those groups who do the sorts of stuff you like.
If when you try out those groups you will find what the prevalent 'attitude' of the group is, and if it's not what you can cope with, look elsewhere.

If there's any consolation to feeling old before your time, you tend to hold on to your 'young outlook' for longer, because you'll stay as you are without feeling need to adapt to less immature behaviour in future. There'll be 'young' attitudes mixed in there that get protected and aren't discarded in the drive to conform yourself to some set of arbitrary expectations. So I have found for myself & some others I know, but it may be true for you too. So it's not all bad

even as a junior high schooler, i never related at an age-appropriate level with my adolescent peers, i only felt comfortable talking with the adult staff.

When you miss stuff, when your timing's off, you're like oil in water on a playground. If there's a few other misfits you can band together, I suppose, but apart from that you're on your own. And the adult world, where remaining ignorant of autism can often yield better results than learning about it, is just another playground. Well, lots of them really.

On your own, or locked in some wierd delusional relationship, dragging other people into the morass.

First there's knowing about it, and then there's living with it. I'm for a future where knowing about the shades of disability is part of the culture.

I wonder if maybe aspies can better understand adults because there is less ambiguity?

Count me in.

The degree of concurrence is amazing.

I'm female and 22 but someone said to me "you're just so mature" when I was at my hospital placement the other day. I also get told I'm sensible. Girls my own age don't like me and tend to call me "clever" but almost in a pejorative way; it's their way of isolating me from themselves somehow.

I like to do stuff like make up meal plans and cook things from scratch, really care about tidying my house, don't go out drinking etc. I tried all the drinking and drugs stuff when I was 15 and it got boring quickly.

When my boyfriend broke up with me he said I'm pretty much like a child and an adult all in one, and I didn't make sense to him. (In his words) he didn't understand how someone could be so sensible, organised and clever but go mute when they're stressed out and want to buy a chocolate in the shape of a rabbit or watch a children's film as a soothing mechanism.

I feel like I confuse people because I surround myself with childish "cute" things, like my water bottle with smiley cupcakes on it and my obsession with all kinds of animals, but come over as quite cold/unfriendly and insistent on following regulations.

Basically you are not alone in the "seeming more mature" thing.

Often no one of my classmates would talk to me, unless they realized an opportunity to make fun of me. Especially beginning with secondary school it were the teachers and other grown-ups I enjoyed to talk to. I often felt like an adult in a child's body.

I vividly remember one afternoon in the garden where all boys and girls met for collective play. I did not manage nor did feel the need to join the group. My final conclusion "They are all behaving like small childs!" put an end to the pleasant afternoon mood. Eventually all adults surrounded me, sat down on chairs and started a serious questioning about my behaviour. I was really frightened for they made me realize I was abnormal and made me feel completely segregated. It was all stress!

My mother always repeatedly stated: "He does not talk to everybody!" when asked about my apparently shy behaviour.

I am wary of seeing myself as 'mature'...life bites me in the ass way too often for me to take myself that seriously

I am both a mixture of superficial maturity and immaturity. However I find that I superficially get along with elderly people better, as I don't feel as self conscious; I know I'm not expected to connect to them a lot so I feel less awkward and embarrassed, which ironically results in more comfortable interactions.