A child in an adult world

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Joined: 8 Mar 2007
Age: 49
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,714
Location: Snapdragon Ridge

21 Nov 2009, 12:25 am

Yep...I am 34 years old
...will never marry, have children or drive a car...
I give world-weary 22-year-olds the heebee-jeebies on a regular basis
...but kids love me.

I have relationships with men who have a preference for young girls...Because I guess I offer the child-like-ness...but not as much of the trouble...and I can remember and relate to stuff that happened in the 70's .
I think it is incredibly fool-hardy for someone to get mixed up with the likes of me, because I am so incredibly useless in so many ways.

I am not sure what the adult world is really like, since I spend my life around other emotionally-stunted artists and musicians...

It def. has it's ups and downs... :roll:

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Spokane_Girl

21 Nov 2009, 1:17 am

Raptor wrote:

A lot of what most of you are saying is very familiar grounds to me. Whats weird is that when I was a kid I wanted soooo much to be an adult and to have the rights and all the "stuff" grown-ups had and to be treated as an equal by them. When I got closer to adult milestones like turning 18 and graduating high school I really wanted to slow it all down, though, and stay where I was a while longer. No way was I ready for all that and even I'd panic over it sometimes but, of course, I had to act like I couldn't wait to become an adult.
I can do a fairly convincing job of acting like a seasoned adult but that's all it is; an act!
If I live to be 100 I'll still be an adolescent.

I felt the same way too. I wanted to be older and I wanted to drive a car, have my own house, and do whatever I want (know what I mean by that?). Then at age 10, I didn't want to grow up. When I got near 18, I hated it because it meant my childhood be over and I would no longer be a kid and people expect more out of you but when I was 12 I decided I wanted to get older because I got sick and tired of stupid adults and them saying I was disrespectful just because "I'm a kid." I felt I had to walk on eggshells because of it. But then when I reached high school, I started to freak out because I felt I wasn't ready to be an adult but yet at age 16 I wanted to live on my own but couldn't afford it. I had no money. I wanted out because I couldn't stand my family. That time I couldn't wait till I was out of high school so I can work and live on my own. So off and on I wanted to stay a child and then other times I just wanted to grow up and be an adult.

But now I am already an adult, I see it's not so bad. I can still do the same things I did in my teens. Who needs kid menus. I have games I can play or music to listen to while I wait for my food. My parents have told me since I was nine that age groups for toys and computer programs are guide lines for what ages would enjoy it. I still like Clifford and Curious George and Arthur and old Nick shows I grew up with. In fact I think lot of adults like kid shows but it's a guilty pleasure because no one admits it and when they do, they say they watched it with their child or with a kid they baby sit or with their grand child, etc.

IMForeman
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21 Nov 2009, 2:02 pm

This is exactly how I feel. Well put.

OuterBoroughGirl
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21 Nov 2009, 2:22 pm

I often feel like a child, trying my best to function as an adult. My level of success in this endeavor has been somewhat mixed. I have manged to complete my Master's Degree. I work full time, and I very much hope I will be able to continue at my present place of employment for as long as I choose to do so. I work with preschoolers, and I often feel that I relate better to the children than to the other adults. I have a wonderful boyfriend who I'm very happy with. He's somewhat aspie-ish himself, however, and our interactions are often very playful and childlike. Our style of interaction would definitely be regarded as odd by any onlookers, but it works for us. I live on my own, in a studio apartment. However, my apartment does not look like a residence of an adult. It looks like an oversized, single occupancy dorm room, occupied by a sheltered college freshman who has never had to pick up after him/ herself, and has no clue how to go about doing so. All of the very limited cooking is done in the microwave, and my stove has basically become storage space for many of the boxes, and assorted garbage I never got around to disposing of properly. I also don't drive, in spite of repeated attempts to attain my license, which have long since been abandoned. I'm luckty to live in a city that's very accessible without a car. I can also get very excited by toys, and I especially love children's books, far more than any normal adult. I could go on about my childlike interests, and my diffuculty in navigating the adult world, but I'll stop for now.
So, yes, I know all too well what it's like to feel like a child in an adult world.

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marshall
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21 Nov 2009, 3:21 pm

epibat: Thank you for starting this thread. It's the pertinent thing I've read here in a while. Recently I've spent nights on the brink of tears pining over my lack of belonging in this world. I've been in this limbo zone for years now. I'm definitely not a child anymore but at the same time I'm not an adult either. I don't really have any sense of personal identity. I'm a gaping void. I feel like I no longer have any point of reference from which to relate to other people. I just don't get what "adult" life is supposed to be all about. I just don't see the point. The thought of no longer having my parents when I get older fills me with dread as well.

epibat
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21 Nov 2009, 6:28 pm

Thank you all so much for your replies. I really appreciate everyone being so open about this, and also so welcoming to me. There is confort in knowing that others share these problems, and it is a comfort that comes without any schadenfreud whatever. Thank you again. PS I hope I'm not marking the end of the thread here, because it sounds like a topic that warrants lots more discussion!

Best wishes to everyone.

epibat

Aimless
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21 Nov 2009, 7:06 pm

schadenfreude-I've been trying to think of that word for days. Thanks. Good word.

Willard
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21 Nov 2009, 10:58 pm

poopylungstuffing wrote:

I give world-weary 22-year-olds the heebee-jeebies on a regular basis
.

Yeah, this kind of bugs me a lot, because I still feel mentally in that 19-26 year old bracket, and I would be (and always used to be) most comfortable hanging out with people of that age. Unfortunately now, I'd just be considered some creepy old dude, and I actually look considerably younger than I am. Its funny (in a tragicomic sort of way) when I get talking music or movies or such with somebody that young and reference something that I remember as if it were yesterday, to get a look of stunned shock and the question "How OLD ARE YOU?" :oops:

Well, lessee, the first Star Wars film was released the same month I graduated High School...what was that - two, three years ago? No, No - not the first EPISODE - the first movie... :wink:

LittleTigger
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22 Nov 2009, 7:47 am

You described me to a Q.

I don't have children, as you can maybe guess why,
I'm too much of a little boy myself,

I been alive for 41 years and I still have
the mental ness of a 7 year old boy
I am told.

I don't get growedup humour or jokes, I still
laff at poop/poo and bogey/booger things and still
watch Sesame Street, if I watch news I
get scared and cry and hide for days and
my brother has to look for me, so I quit that
junk a long time ago.

I ike my toys and I don't want to give them
up or I get depsressed and want to die
just like fi I'm force to wear plain clothes
and if I can't have my Tigger and Pooh overalls
I get real sad and I want to draw on my clothes
to make happy faces on them and I want to rip
my plain clothes up and I just get sad.

But I run away from sad things because I can't
stand sad so I shun sad things and shun the
news and stuff I just 3want to play and be
happy after work is done.

I don't udnerstand groweupds they are too
hard and but most of them that I know here
are nice to me at least and my cousin still
took me trick or treating this year and
thr growedups wer nice to me and I got
a whole pumpkin full of sweets/candy.

I don't feel like I belong in this body
or time, I am not 41 on the inside, I'm
not even 25, or 17 or 15 or even 10.

I'm 7 inside, everyone else changed
and faded away.

Thank goodness for brothers (like mine)
who understand me and still play with me.

You sound cool do you play Pokemon or
do other fun things not just pokemon
do you like Paddington Bear show?
Just examples nto exactly just those
things like what do you like to play or
do for fun?

epibat wrote:

I'm very new here.

Please can anyone relate to my feeling that "I just don't belong in the adult world"? I'm 50 years old and I feel like a child, trying to play adult games in an adult world. Adult decision scare me. Other adults always seem so much more "with it", so much more competent, that I do, even though I'm quite highly educated. I often wonder where these "real" adults learned to be so adult! Examples: I feel as though my son's teachers are like my teachers, whenever I attend parents' evenings; I feel out of my depth when dealing with 'grown up' issues like buying a new car or discussing my finances; if I were to introduce a work colleague to my wife, I might feel as though I were a child sitting among two adults. It's sll as though I've never really grown up.

Background - I've only recently realised, through internet research, the extent to which I exhibit aspie behaviours. These include...

- Very esoteric and exclusive interests;
- Build-ups frustration and outbursts of anger, usually over minutiae;
- Getting stressed out because of an overload of information - I always try to master all the details of things, (e.g. getting obsessed with the need to learn which keys fit which cupboards and cabinets in the office where I have just started working, and getting wound up because it's too much to learn by rote) instead of being satisfied with a general understanding;
- Perfectionsm - overly high expectations placed by me on myself;
- A tendency to make "black or white" judgements about people;
- Boring people with a monologue rather than engaging in a two-way conversation;
- General lack of interest in other people's interests and lives;
- A history of limerence, i.e. romantic infatuations with people (or rather with my idealisations of those people).

So can anywone relate to my "child in and adult body" syndrome?! Is this characteristic of aspies too?

I'd really appreciate any information.

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wigglyspider
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22 Nov 2009, 6:04 pm

I feel the same, definitely. D: It's kind of like I'm playing dress-up while everyone else is the "real thing".
I'm a lot younger than you, but I think when I'm your age I'll still feel like this.
When I was a little kid I would look at the grown-ups around me and I couldn't believe they used to be like me and I would grow up to be like them. And I didn't.;;;;;;;;;;;;

Gosh you guys, let's all go live on an island somewhere and build straw huts and catch lobsters and not have to worry about cars and mortgage and politics. >_<;;

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LittleTigger
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23 Nov 2009, 8:26 am

I would love that we could colour and paint and play
and cook all kinds of fish and crabs and coconuts and
stuff and make our own sweets/candy out of tree sap sugar
that would be fun.

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A Boy And His Cat

When society stops expecting
too much from me, I will
stop disappointing them.

CockneyRebel
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23 Nov 2009, 9:55 am

I don't know whether I'm a child in an adult's body, or a recycled teenager.

Childlike things about me:

I cry when I'm sad or upset
I like to wear boy type pyjammas to bed, and not the fitted or racy stuff that they make for younger women
I have a mannish 60's haircut that I will not be losing, any decade, soon
I love my model Routemaster buses and I play with them sometimes.

Things about me that are that of an adolecent:

I can be up at 2 in the morning, listening to The Kinks on youtube
I dress the same way that The Kinks did in the mid-1960s
I go on about how the 60s were the best thing, since sliced bread
There are days that I spend all day on youtube and WP
The only reading material that I will touch has to have something to do with music, the 1960s, or both

What do you guys think, just by what I've posted here?

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Spokane_Girl

23 Nov 2009, 10:07 am

CockneyRebel wrote:

Lot of people cry when they are sad or upset. I don't see the rest as childish except for playing with your routemasters. The rest about adolescence, sounds normal to me. I also youtube listening to A League Of Their Own music by Hans Zimmer, and staying up all night, and sleeping till 1:30PM, sometimes later, I like oldies, I listen to my A League of their Own soundtrack, and I like watching people play videogames and they post it at youtube, I also like kids shows, I do fanfiction, I like listening to video game music, I also spend lot of my time on here. So am I childlike too or like a teen? I dunno. I know I'm childlike in some ways, I have some toys and kid movies and shows. I also talk about A league of Their Own. My husband told me I have been talking about it for the past two weeks. It's been that long? Geez. It seems like a week. Now I want to be a Peach and wear one of those skirts. I might see next year if there are any Halloween costumes for it unless I am back to Benny & Joon again or onto something else.

LittleTigger
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24 Nov 2009, 12:11 am

I never grew up inside.

I don't know the cause.

Heat stroke?

Autism?

Minimal brain damage?

Heck I'm not a doctor, I'm a technician.

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A Boy And His Cat

When society stops expecting
too much from me, I will
stop disappointing them.

leejosepho
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24 Nov 2009, 6:18 am

LittleTigger wrote:

I never grew up inside.

I don't know the cause.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he turns not away from it." (Proverbs 22:6)

With or without bringing religion into the mix, that as never done for me. My parents apparently thought "the war to end all wars" (WWII) had set the stage for us boomers to mindlessly move along blissfully ... or should that be blissfully move along mindlessly? Either way, here I am thinking about my life and myself as we are.

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Celtic_Frost
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24 Nov 2009, 6:33 am

I don't fit in as a child nor do I fit in as an adult. I feel very childish most of the time, though.

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