Age issues

I’ve got to be honest I miss being a teenager. I had so many ambitions and dreams for that part of my life that never panned out. Now people tell me I should want ‘adult’ things. A kid, a calm responsible woman, a house and mortgage, sensible job. I don’t really find my self strongly draw to those things.

I'm well disposed towards children but I’d rather act like one than be responsible for them. I prefer wild adventurous women to the settling down type. A house would be nice but I wouldn’t want to be locked into a job I hate to afford the mortgage. My job is far from secure. It’s great, it probably as close as you can get to ‘mad scientist’ in real life, but not very secure.

I really value family and home but for me it’s not really so much about reproduction or coupling up and settling down. I’d like to have a home I could fill with friends and parties and make great memories. Projects too. It’s fun to turn your living room into a workshop for a few weeks and just build something cool with your friends. … if I had any. At least any who wanted to do that.

I intend to continue a looong time, keeping the 30 year old look :P, and still a child inside 

i am the same

Yes and before I knew about autism I spent time trying to work out why I felt that way. I questioned friends who all said they felt young. But I think they meant young at heart. For me, I've always felt everyone is more "adult" than me. Even the friends who are younger. That doesn't mean I act childish but I just feel a bit behind people my own age. There's no right or wrong way to be. One of my best friends is twice my age.

I'm 49, Billy. I try not to look back into the past. I'm more interested in the present.  But as far as I can remember, at 34, I was in a constant battle with my harsh inner critic, trapped in multiple unhealthy relationships and working in a soul-destroying job.

17? Tough one. I can't remember anything about how I felt at 17. But, I have a suspicion it was something along the lines of socially awkward, spiritually lonely, generally misunderstood, and confused by the world around me. That was my general emotional palette up until 40.

So, I guess for me, I'm good with feeling 49—and wouldn't (I suspect) want to feel like I did either 17 or 34.

I almost failed last year at college after joking to my math teacher, the only one on my side btw, when she asked me angry with me for ingnoring classes for weeks, how old are you?, I answered in poem for kids, rhymy and catchy in polish, that I'm five, five and half,. barely see over the table, and so on, haha :)

Yes!  I was just thinking about this yesterday.  I have a very, very hard time calling myself a "woman."  I don't feel like a woman.  I usually resort to saying girl or female.  I am smart and very articulate and well read, but I've never viewed myself as an adult and don't think I ever will.  I feel like an imposter if I say I'm an adult.  

If they have similar interests to me, then we start to get along in no time, RPG, sci-fi and fantasy books, that is not typical interest for an NT, so they are probably starved to get someone to talk to :P

otherwise months of careful probing to find a crazy spark in them

elderly will love you just for talking to them, and that is something in common :P

kids for treating them like equal, almost all dislike being patronised

My experience is very similar to yours. Kids or elderlies. You don't even have to try; we click and can talk for hours.  Be kind to each other, empathise with others and cherish the moments we spent together. 

Do you have workmates with who you get along well? Like without trying? 

I use to be fine at work too until I was 29 but don't know what happened after that. May be became less tolerant. 

Occasionally I joke that I am still a kid, and than there is not aging thing, I look 20 years younger, I supect some of NTs envy that.

Like you I get well with kids up to 10 years old, and elderly, everybody in between treats me as if I was a leper or sth like that

I don't feel my age too. I'm turning 35 this November, and I think 55-60 mentally, but because I'm petite. Someone with very high energy (I learnt over time that staying at a high point could save me from awkward social interactions, to be honest, that is just what my mind thinks, but I make it more uncomfortable ), I appear younger to the outside world. Get IDed every single time. 

Oh, I'm curious. Do you get IDed for not making eye contact? 

It offended me many years, but now it doesn't matter because I see it as a 'normal' world fixed mindset than my limitation.