Older younger people

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When I was younger I felt older in a way, but maybe more naive.
Now I see people my age and I feel considerably younger.
I can feel bad about myself whenI think about that but it also seems people pretend to be mature practical adults who are "with the program". I'm not sure though. I'm not sure how to describe what I mean. In some ways I feel real slooooow in this regard even though I don't want to be like them.

Yes. Someone else had mentioned it elsewhere (I forget where), and it reminded me of when I was little and my mom said something like she kept getting older and yet she still felt younger than everyone else in the world. I thought this was odd as a kid because I guess I took it literally and couldn't figure out how that would logically work. But when I became an adult and remembered her saying that, I understood. People try to tell me that I'm an expert at what I do, but I still feel like everyone else, even those much younger than me, are older and wiser. And most of my friends outgrew me, moving on to "adult" interests and pastimes, while I'm still the same person I always was.

I used to be the "kid" among the people I hung out with, who were much older. But lately the people I'm most comfortable with are younger.

And people constantly asked me what grade I was in for at least a decade after I graduated.

I answered the door of my own house to a young man who asked, "can I speak to your mum or dad please?

After being a mechanic for 14 years, I got a job at an insurance company, one of the girls asked, "is this your first job"?, she thought I was 16 and had just left school.

All a disadvantage though regarding relationships, you see women thought I was too young for them, even when in reality I was too old for them, there was no bit in the middle where I was the right age group for anybody.

And on top of the Aspie tendancy, Iam also half Prussian, East Europeans can tend to have infantile appearences.

I can relate to a great deal of this. The few real friends I have are actually around my age, but they're all pretty odd, in one way or another. Thus, I really don't have anything that would be regarded as "normal" friendships for someone my chronological age.
I think my language skills are age appropriate. I'm relatively articulate most of the time, though when I'm especially tired or under significant strain, proper grammar, word usage and sentence structure tends to go out the window.
I can *really* relate to not having age appropriate body language, clothing and interests. Since I was born, twenty nine and a half years plus two and a half weeks have passed. This makes my chronological age twenty nine and a half. This also means that in a little over five months, I'll be thirty. I know this intellectually, but I find it difficult to believe. That seems like such a "grown up" age, and I don't feel even remotely like a grown-up. I really don't identify at all with my chronological age.
I know for a fact that several of the women I work with are younger than me in the chronological sense, yet every single one of them seems older than me. I work with young children, and I have a good rapport with the children I work with. However, they don't see me as an adult, and for that reason, they don't treat me with the same level of respect they do the other classroom staff. This creates problems in terms of classroom/ behavior management. I have a reputation in the preschool where I work as someone the kids just "don't listen to." As the education and development of young children is a special interest of mine, I really want to continue working in this field. For that reason, this particular issue is one I'd really like to resolve. I'm working on improving my ability to command respect so I can better manage behavior, but this is proving quite challenging. I just can't seem to figure out how to present myself in order to come across as an adult. I'm *extremely* young for my age. People are always shocked when they find out how old I really am.
It always weirds me out when I hear of people younger than me getting married, having children, buying homes and cars. Of course, this is becoming increasingly common as the years pass, but I never get used to it. All I have is a studio apartment I can't manage to clean or organize, and a MetroCard I rarely even use any more, as everywhere I go on a regular basis these days is within walking distance of my home. I seem to encounter quite a lot of "older younger people."
I know all too well that I've "got to grow up some time," and as the end of my twenties fast approaches, this is a thought that hits me with increasing frequency. The thought that I will need to grow up one of these days inevitably fills me with dread, especially since I have no clue how to go about doing that.
Incidentally, I also haven't figured out how to distinguish between important and unimportant details when trying to communicate something, which is why nearly all of my posts are walls of text. That's another one of those "adult skills" I have not yet mastered.

It's weird, I've always felt like I was emotionally younger than my physical age. I've not felt ready to move to a new stage of my life (such as college) until a few years after most people my age do.
I feel like I'm stuck in a time warp where I'm not in the right period for anybody, people my age are settling down at jobs, some have are married or even have kids, while other younger kids I would relate to I feel won't want to hang out with someone older because that just doesn't have a good vibe.
It's been really hard to make friends as a grad student because I hate most of the people in the program but very hard to meet undergrads who I would like to interact with.