Autistic aging

I am 53 and have never really grown up. In many ways I am still stuck in the 80's in terms of culture. I am particually un woke. I have a mortgage, always worked, been married for 18 years but have never felt like a grown up. Didn't have kids by choice because I knew I could not handle being a parent , I am very selfish with my time.

I am 59 and often child like in my behaviour, but i can also behave in a mature way. I look my age but dont act it 

Do you know a little while ago I went to a maid café. And if you’ve ever been to a maid café you’ll see the maids all have profiles listing things about their background and their blood types and also their ages. And as is often the case every age was listed as “forever 17.” This is almost a uniformly followed tradition in maid Cafes now.

but from my point of view if I could get the government to issue me a driving license that said “forever 18” under DOB I would. I’m aware I no longer look like I could be just a few years older than 18 but I see no reason to give people a pigeonhole to put me in. If there’s any doubt about it let them assume I’m younger. Especially since I probably act a lot younger than I am.

of course I identify with the youth culture of the 90s and 00s. Actually more specifically with the subculture I came into contact with in the 90s and 00s. And the thing about subculture is it’s the place that people go to relive their youths. You get 50 year old goths squeezing themselves into latex corsets to dance under the flashing lights and the way they did when they were young. But the sub cultures keep bringing in new young people some more successfully than others. It’s hilarious to find some person in their teens or 20s who turns around and talks about this great new band Nirvana they’ve heard about.

sub cultures have always been places that people who feel like outsiders congregate and in this sense there’s a certain ageless quality to them.

that’s said  looking at mainstream culture vicariously through the lens of a handful of relatively normal friends I  used to have I would say there is a period in life around ones late teens and early 20s when one gets to make up the social rules oneself. Not on your own but collectively in a small clique of maybe 10 people or less you can create your own rules for how the world should work. And as you move into university that clique   grows a little wider maybe becomes 50 or 100 people, A group in your student society perhaps.

I have to say for myself I would dearly love to get back to that. and I think that’s kind of what sub cultures are. when enough people get together and decide what they’re going to do things differently from the way the rest of society does it that  things kind of persist beyond one generation to the next A subculture is born, and to some extent has more freedom and flexibility in that. And to some extent when a subculture is smaller it probably has more freedom and flexibility.

for example in many ways I preferred it when anime was a niche subculture. In those days nobody felt the need to try and make anime respectable. We knew damn well we weren’t seen as respectable and we didn’t feel the need to be.

that rebellious spirit of youth is something that I covet. And something I find sadly lacking in modern woke youth.

and let’s be blunt biologically speaking being young is just objectively better. Stronger, more adaptable, more resilient physically speaking. Many people would say more attractive subjectively speaking. I’ve heard people say that as a children they wanted to be like their grandparents because they seem so wise and respected. And I think to myself your wise grandparent would probably slap you if they heard you say that. Or at least they would if their arthritis didn’t stop them, with their  creaky bones and their bleary eyes. They know wrinkles and grey hair are nothing to be envied.

For me it feels like my tongue is burning. Ive tried pop a few times but im only able to drink a couple tiny sips if I try hard enough.

Actually this raises an interesting point. 

As a child I was a stereotypical “little professor” and was more comfortable with adults than children. 

So maybe I’m actually Benjamin Button, aging in reverse!

Ahh it’s so interesting! I love the fizz of pop, definitely a sensory thing for me in a positive way, I find it fascinating that for you it’s the opposite! :) 

i always get told i look 10 years younger.
but i always felt instead much older than my age in my head.

so i dunno, i guess physical outside age looks younger, while my brain age feels older. probably just stress or something or loneliness or putting up with societies weird *** that i dont fit in with

Approaching 40 in a few weeks time and still get mistaken for a 20 year old. Also asking me are you at school, college or university? I show them the upcoming meetings in a group belong to. Some people understand.

Think age is creeping up and it's just a number. In my town news spreads quickly.

I’m 23 and feel like an old man. People still call me a boy but I do feel old somehow. A girl I dated even said I look older than 23. I was talking to guy in his 40s the other day and he said I’m just a baby chicken lol

I feel simultaneously 20 years older and 20 years younger than I am.
I am often confused for a youngster too because I have that Autism meets Ehlers baby-face.

I'm 36 and often mistaken for a child. Curious to see how long that effect will last tbh.

I've no idea what age I feel as I don't do the neurotypical milestones. I guess slightly older than my student friends?

I agree with this completely (other than im about 20 years younger and I cant handle the fizz of pop so I mostly drink water [blue wrapper only] and lemonaid)

mos def true.

People always guess me as way younger.

I feel, even as the world changes, that the present is the main entertainment.I think that makes a difference. If people feel their lives are in the past they will languish in the present and fear (or resent) the future.. I don't have much nostalgia for the past. I am not afraid of the future. I do also find the older I get the more perspective I have on my own thought and feeling processes and the more I appreciate just how unique and wonderful they are. It is when attempts at compliance to a social code that I can't effectively participate in hobble me so I don't even bother anymore.

Being isolated ages people too. I have friends who, if they don't understand me, at least find me interesting and appreciate the enriching exchanges and sharing of our varied pasts.

Commonality of interest is an interesting thing too: as I age I notice there are more and more avenues to connect with others, finding my special interests enriched by hearing about theirs, about their experiences. this was a big step. I also had a tendency, sometimes, to make a prospective friend a special interest and this never went well, as you can imagine. It must have been smothering for them. I haven't done that in decades

All through my life my greatest fear was to be forgotten, left behind. Until recently I didn't understand why. One of my current special interests is memory retrieval. Ive used the hemi sync meditations from the Monroe institute and just talking things over with a friend in a non therapeutic, breezy way.

I am connecting that I was actually left behind and forgotten numerous times by the adults of whom I was a ward and by other children. It was terrifying. I mean to say I did remember that it happened, but now I can associate it with the feelings, the fear. So I guess I could say I'm finding it a little easier to meld my memories, thoughts and feeling as they are happening. This has always been very hard for me. I don't know if that's age related but it feel like it is.

Take heart. It gets easier! Practice kindness and gentleness with yourself.

I'm only 18 but I often feel much younger than I am due to some of the things I like to watch/do, but then other times I feel much older than I actually am and I've felt like that for years. I feel like I had been forced to grow up too quickly due to unfortunate circumstances in my life, and then I've missed out on a lot of childhood/teenage experiences because of it and also because of masking. i've come to terms with my self that it's okay for me to like things like colouring in and kids tv shows and build a bears, it doesn't make me any less of an adult. I feel a lot of the pressures of adulting, I just don't understand them and struggle lol. I also feel that I look younger than I actually am, like I look at literal 13 year olds and a lot of them look way older than me.

Yes, I think childhood curiosity is a lovely trait to have! I massively struggle with being autistic and all the negatives that seems to come with it, however I think this side of me is probably my only positive part of being autistic! 

I identify with most of that Sloan .

What’s so great about growing up anyway? Some of the most inspiring people are those who have retained their childhood curiosity and sense of fun well into adulthood.

I am 40 but feel like I’m about 20. I have a lot of what I suppose most people would say are childish/teenage interests, I dress much younger than most people my age, I love anything cute or sparkly, I have no interested in “typical” grown up things like getting married and settling down or having children. I look much younger than I am (which is probably a combination of how I act and my style as well as some weirdly good genes!). I always felt really left out, everyone around me was always looking for the next promotion, desperately waiting to be proposed to, wanting to move in with partners, planning their dream and weddings and none of that was something I wanted to do. 

 I also am just not “grown up”… I don’t drink tea or coffee, and only drink squash or pop, id prefer chicken nuggets to a steak and fine wine, I have soft toys on my bed, at work my sellotape dispenser is a dinosaur and my post it notes are cat shaped, it’s just who I am! 

At 52 I am starting to feel that age is catching up with me both in terms of struggles with fatigue and the aging affect on my looks seems to be accelerating. I look a photos that people take of me and it's like the sparkle has gone from my eye, the youthful cheeky look is fading fast, the grey hair is spreading to those hairs that haven't deserting my bonce.

Physical health is so so.
I have struggled with some rare aftereffects of the first COVID vaccine, but I try to counteract this by going to the gym 2-3 times a week.

I guess that its quite evident (from THAT thread) that I, like you dad, feel that the World has changed and I do sometimes struggle to find commonality with the younger generation. Unlike you, I do feel somewhat alienated now that I am older. I could go into the whole spiel of "back in the old days", but maybe I'll save that for another day / thread.