"Enjoy the 20-25" - Crippled with anxiety

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I was at a bar about a year and a half ago when some older guy said "enjoy the 20-25 because it goes by like that", snapping his fingers.

So I keep on analyzing what he meant by that and I came to the following conclusion:

- Have a blast with your friends and PARTY that s**t up
- Enjoy your weekends to their fullest potential,
- Have a healthy dose of worklife,
- Date a lot. Have sex a lot

because 25 is only 5 years away and then....30.

Your 20's. A decade you should cherish. One that you should thoroughly enjoy. The defining decade. Middle age is a good 20 years off and your running full steam ahead.

Juuuuust before I turned 20 my grandfather told me in a loving manner to date women and have fun while your still young and still can. I really didn't want to turn 20, I mean, REALLY. I was dreading it.

Your young, youthful, and....well, that was about a year and a half ago in 2014 when I turned 20.

I'm 21, and here I am, 3 months away from my 22nd birthday, depressed as s**t. I don't even feel like celebrating my 22nd birthday. I don't want to acknowledge the date.

I'm almost halfway through my "early 20's" and feel like I've missed out on so much and f****d up a lot along the way. While I'm gaining momentum in some areas, I feel like a failure in a number categories.

As of now I:

- Have no job, but very close to getting one
- Live with my parents
- Don't have much personal money
- Been through 2 programs and 1 single course in college and haven't settled for one
- Afraid to stay home alone
- Afraid of going to new places sometimes
- Advancing in music
- About to change medications again
- Lots of anxiety issues
- Can't drive until June

I feel awful concerning some things. I'm officially "in" my 20's at 21 and:

- I don't have a good circle of friends. Just e-friends.
- I don't think I've been to a party in...a year and a half.
- I'm still a virgin.
- School is at a dead stop. I can't start again until September.
- Not much, if any cash

Sometimes I wonder whether it would just be better to live like we did in the 50's when everything was much simpler. Or even hunter gatherer times. Primal needs are the only ones taken care of. You eat, sleep, s**t, and have sex. Nothing more/nothing less.

I can't believe I'll have been out of high school for FIVE years in June of next year. Depressing.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this bar guys comment. Thinking about it depresses me though. Realizing that time gets faster as you get older and this thing called "death" approaches at an ever rapid speed towards you. It must SUCK to feel time perception going by that fast.

I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe I'm just too damn young that I don't even KNOW how young I am and am stressing over nothing.

You know lot of times things are delayed for people with autism. I mean I did not learn to talk until I was about 8 years old.

So maybe for you 20-25 is going to be 25-30. Try not to be so hard on yourself (I know, easier said than done).

Many people don't have REAL fun until they get in their 30s.

You should concentrate on the job (which you are getting), going to college, and the driving more than losing your virginity. It doesn't matter when you lose your virginity, really.

After you've been on the job a year, you could start thinking about moving out to your own place.

How about college?

Honestly, I'm near the end of that age range, and I haven't really done much with those years. But you know what? It's not the end of the world. Honestly, I don't feel I've got any less time ahead of me than I did when I was 20. Have I wasted my early 20s? Very much probably. I'm still a virgin (not that I care, I don't really want to change that), I'm still terrified of parties, I don't see irl friends much and I'm unemployed because of anxiety problems. But I'm happy in my own way.

Yes, the days have blurred past in a boredom-filled haze (mainly because I haven't had much access to my strongest special interest of the moment, so don't read too much into that), but I've also been able to become more comfortable in who and what I am.

My advice is to take life at your own pace. You don't need to conform to society's expectations. If you're that worried about not being able to do certain things, you might be better off seeking help about it. At the end of the day, 25 is still young. So is 30 in a way, because you'd still be less than half the way through the average lifespan.

How much of that do you actually want, anyway?

Because partying and sex have never appealed to me. I'd much rather hang out in the library reading medical journals. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like there's only a short time span to get my life together and all that before people start looking down on me.

Never mind about having fun, I'm too worried about getting in shape, a car, career, house, learning the basics of politics so I don't make a complete fool of myself and vote poorly, learning how to deal with money, gaining confidence, finding a partner and getting hobbies before I get relegated to loser status.

Being pretty much friendless and having depression isn't making things any easier, and the little self-esteem I had was shattered when my psychologist declared me to be a "high functioning autistic".

Your 20s are NOT for working on your career and getting your life 100% sorted. Yeah have a job or do a course or something, but people now don't have serious careers until they are in their 30s. By your late 20s if you have some idea about and a bit of experience in what you want to do that's enough. Plenty of people in their 30s still have no idea about what they want to do. The people I knew that got it all sorted with jobs/partner/kids in their early 20's are all boring as hell now.

Dating/sex a lot is not important. Most of my mates that are married never dated. They went out with a few people for a while then one day they found the right one. Like 3 or 4 girlfriends in 5-10 years, for a couple of months each. None of us ever chatted up girls in clubs or bars, not once. A few used online dating agencies.

30 is not a big number anymore. I am 31 and couldn't care less, I feel the same as I did at 20 and have no signs of age at all. I can do what I like, the same as any 20 year old. The plus side is I earn more money now than I did so can buy a lot more xbox games than them

Living away from home is expensive and unless you are at uni, most people in their early 20s are living at their parents. Most people end up back at their parents houses after Uni anyway. A few people I know did leave home till 27-28 and they were neurotypical.

I will just touch on something you said about being young. It is the one area where I do feel a bit older, but people your age look like 16 year olds to me now. I remember thinking what an adult I was at that age but looking at people that age now you realise that you are still very young then, so its not worth worrying about all these things just yet.

By the sounds of it you are doing alright and are making an effort. I wouldn't worry about it and just carry on doing what your doing. Sounds like you will be driving soon which opened the world up to me quite a lot and you might have a job soon, which means money, which means more freedom. Carry on that way and it will slowly come together.

With the friends thing, I had the same problem. Do you have any hobbies? I joined a local group that did what I was interested in at the time and that worked out well. It was horrible to start with to be honest but as you are all there for the same reason its easier to talk to them, just talk about the hobby.

I didn't hardly do anything in my 20s but I enjoyed it looking back. Didn't have very good jobs, was at my parents for most of it, little money but it was still good. I hate being in new places and hate being home alone too but it hasn't stopped me in the long run, I also haven't been to a party in about 12 years and am not bothered in the slightest.

I can't say there is a single thing I "missed out" on. There is nothing you can do in your 20s that you cant do at any other time of your life. A guy I knows father was a plumber for 20 years, now he has decided to become a baker at 50, its never too late.

Sorry went off on one a bit, but you get my idea I hope.

I am a sociologist who studies adults on the autism spectrum.

I have noticed that the early 20s actually seem to be the hardest time in most autistic people's lives. Usually for the kinds of reasons you stated. Things tend to come together in the late twenties/early thirties and then the lives of people on the autism spectrum seem to be as good or better then neurotypicals. Just speaking generally.

For neurotypicals, they do seem to live it up in the early 20s and then look back on those years fondly afterward. I don't know why. Personally, I think a person should have the decency to be ashamed of themselves sometimes. You feeling down about this goes to show that you're looking to improve, which you will.

Statistically, it would be really unusual if you did not have a dramatic upturn in the next few years. I don't know if that helps to relieve your anxiety. That's my nerd sociology way of trying to tell you that things are going to be okay.

Age is just a number. Age is somewhat random. Some people in their 60s still naturally act like young adults, and some people in their 20s act like a much older person who's been beat down by the world for decades. It's the rare person that always does things that are "age-appropriate" at every age throughout their lives. Don't be so hard on yourself.

The older people you mentioned probably grew up in a different era, when lots of guys in their early 20s were getting married, starting a family, and getting that union job at the mill that they knew they'd have for the next 30 years before drawing their pensions and babysitting their grandkids. It's not like that for guys nowadays. Those older folks who tell you the 20-25 period is the best you'll ever have, or who imply that now's the time you need to date and have sex a lot, probably don't understand how things are different now for everyone. The world's more complicated now, it's going to take more time than it used to for any person to figure out their life's path, not just the person with autism.

Trust me, as bad as things might feel right now, you'll never become too old to stop enjoying life, so don't worry that you're going to run out of time once you reach a certain age.

Isn't that dating? They didn't go straight from meeting someone to the alter, did they?

BTW, I pretty much screwed up my decade of the 20s. Didn't do much dating at all-not because I didn't want to, no one seemed to find me attractive. Wish I could have that decade back again to fix it.