Feeling like I relate to different age ranges

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SeeingEyeButterfly
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15 Feb 2015, 12:25 am

I'm 21 years old, and well, I kinda sometimes feel younger than myself, and crave to experience a more youthful experience. I dunno if it's my PDD-NOS, or that I didn't have a lot of childhood experiences after I turned 11, but I feel like I missed a time in my life where I could have found myself more, enjoyed the fun this capitalistic society tries to get us to cram into small sections of the early bits of our lives. I spent a lot of time in small schools with people I didn't really connect with that well, excluding a few, but never made the connections like I've made online and in college. I often imagined like, getting my own little forest area, or getting some island estate if I got lucky enough, and just have my own sort of "Terabithia"-esque place where my mind was the limit, free of society and it's diluted culture, able to enjoy the creativity in my mind with others. I do want to relate to people my age as well though, it's just often I find those people are sucked into this workaholic world of constant university classes and 9-to-5 white collar slavery and just generally boring. Does anyone have any advice about these sorta feelings?


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Sweetleaf
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15 Feb 2015, 12:37 am

I am 25, and I feel like I missed out on a lot of experiences of being an adolecent/teen...kind of retreated to a life of sort of isolating myself and building a wall because I got used to getting picked on and ostracized on a regular basis so after a while it just became easier not to talk to anyone and spend my free time alone reading...going for walks or doing homework or listening to music...lied to my mom and told her I was ok with having no friends and just wanted to do well in school. I have a somewhat younger brother(20 years old) who has some friends even younger who I've hung out with and such admittedly I feel more at home that way than trying to socialize with my age group for the most part...

I don't know how to go about making my own friends...my mom keeps encouraging me to try and go to a local autism group or something(there are a couple around the city I live around and they do some activities and have meetings. I kinda want to but guess it makes me nervous because I keep putting it off...getting caught up in other stuff and IDK.


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SeeingEyeButterfly
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15 Feb 2015, 1:30 am

Yeah, my therapist has said she thinks I might find some kindred spirits in an aspergers group, with me having some of the symptoms in PDD-NOS, but I feel, I dunno, nervous about it. I feel like it's a combination of the stigmas that are there unconsciously, and that it feels a bit, awkward? I mean, I made two of my best friends in the last couple years, both with aspergers, it just feels weird to be in a group based on that, I dunno. I guess it might be worth a try, it just feels almost like I'm being defined by my atypicality and grouped by it, but perhaps it won't be as strange as I imagine it feeling.


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“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


downbutnotout
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15 Feb 2015, 9:20 pm

I feel like I'm torn between two extremes, but I know what you mean. I'd definitely like to return to the point in childhood where building forts didn't just feel silly and the treehouse was a sanctuary.

I never got along with classmates, either. It's hard to connect to your peers when you love learning, but your lab partner thinks their phone is more interesting than the work.