Do you know how old you are?

[Chance]

Physical circumstances like the bodily aches and pains and some changes in looks is the only difference.
In my mind and ways of thinking about life stay the same.

I don't have any trouble remembering my biological age.
Not yet anyway.

Susan do you mean like you just always feel a certain age?
I feel like 23-28 maybe and that has never really changed as I grow older.
I have no idea why and its not really a problem except it makes it even harder to fit in with people my age.
I just feel mentally young (not necessarily immature) and that seems to have me liking things that people younger than me like. Its not easy to explain I guess.

 

[Ambi]

I am terrible at knowing my age. I used to know it cold. Then starting in my thirties, I had to calculate from my birth date, but it only took a second or two. Now I blank and the calculation takes longer (part of that is brain fog, part of that is not caring). I actually have trouble even remembering my wedding anniversary or how long I've been married - again, I think due to brain fog and also not caring (I guess dates/times don't matter to me much!). But as for how old I feel. Decades behind. People often think I am about 10 years younger than I am. I used to think I just looked young, but now I know it's also style of dress and speech - I guess there is something more teenage about it. I am noticing this in videos of Aspies, too. I think it's great, nothing wrong with it - but then, I think the impact it has on others can leave us vulnerable to bullying, so I am trying to address it. (Who knows how successful I will be.)

 

[Rasendra]

I've caught myself having to think about my age a few times but mostly just right after my birthday.

I do feel younger than I am though. As others have said, the dressing or interests that seem younger than others my age. Though I don't really spend much time with anyone my age anyways but when working I do often get more of a sense of it I guess.

 

[Betbet]

I don't feel 31 though, I'd say more late teens early twenties, but I think that's just because I can be immature and I see all the people I went to school with doing proper adult things like buying houses, having kids etc and I'm just like nope no interest in all that jazz.

Same here! When I was pregnant I always felt like I was one of those teenage mums that you see on TV!

 

[OkRad]

Yes. I think about this a lot . I am about 12. Maybe 14. Yes a precocious 14 year old, reading Homer. It bothers me a lot that indo not look how i feel. It is like if i were feeling another gender. I strongly feel a different age but cannot act that age. I do at times but try hard not to as it is rather grotesque to see a grown adult rolling around in the grass with the cats, only to get up and start quoting Plato.

 

[texkag]

So I know how old I am but whenever I'm asked I have to think what year we currently are and do the math.
I was born in 1981 so I think... ok it's 2017 so I'm 36. I can't seem to remember any other way.

I also don't feel 36.
I don't know what 36 is supposed to feel like but I don't think this is it. I still feel like a teenager and look like one... I'm told.

Might be the whole aspies maintain childhood interests and a sense of naivety and childlike wonder and enthusiasm for their passion/obsession thing. Maybe.

Thoughts?

I have always struggled to remember my wife and children's birthdays as well as ages. Like you, I have to work it out from my date of birth. As my maths skills are awful, this takes a long time. What makes things worse, is the anxiety of having to perform maths under pressure while someone is waiting for a reply.

 

[Ylva]

Yeah, especially in years that end in the same number as my birth year, when I turn a round number of years. I calculate it like you do, birthyear to current year, but I am born late in the year, so I spend months feeling like I'm a round, transparent number when in reality, I am a pink, nine-ending number.

 

[fairy_girl]

I have tried to remember but it does get difficult when you get around 30 years old. Honestly I just ask Siri every so often before my birthday starts and try to remember it.

I never really felt my age or what other's aspect you to act like at any age. People seem to focused on that.

 

[clg114]

Physically, I pretty much feel my age. Mentally, I am a spry 40 year old who can do it all. This can be a dangerous situation if I am not careful. I am very lucky to have a wife who keeps me from doing something stupid.

 

[Sabrina]

I do sometimes have to go back to my birth year to be sure as well because it's not something I think much about until someone asks.
Also not sure if it's relevant but there is a checklist of Aspergers traits in females which I filled out and one of them was 'young sounding voice' which does apply to me.
Anyone else?

Yes, me.

 

[onlything]

I've been asked about my age so many times this year that for now I hesitate last than a second between three ages. I mostly reorient myself as I do while looking for an age I must have had during events in the past - by other events. I always been like that and I believe it's going to be harder and harder the more years I add to my age. Simply not enough care about it or my birthdays celebrations.

At times, I feel old, at times like a child. It's like living with a contradiction in my head. I regain child-like sense of wonder about things I love, naivety and believes but due to my experiences in the past I quickly 'matured beyond the years' and often my ptsd covers everything in sight.

I think it's a question of circumstances and experiences that happenes, as well as the 'emotional immaturity'. Whatever it is, I don't think about it, I just go with the flow of things.

 

[the_tortoise]

No idea how old i was in a specific year but recall events from that year and I'll know my age from that. If i think of a song i liked in 1996 i then know i was 15 based on the music but not the year...

That's neat -- my brain does not seem to have a reliable mechanism for attaching temporal info to memories. I have to use contextual clues (like: what house are we living in? what colors are the walls? what shoes/coat/music player do I have? what is in our house?) and link it with associated memories that do have an attached year or age.....and do an additional calculation if I remember year but not age or age but not year and want to know whichever one I don't remember.

I do at times but try hard not to as it is rather grotesque to see a grown adult rolling around in the grass with the cats, only to get up and start quoting Plato.

That's nothing grotesque about that to me, I think it's beautiful -- it would bring me joy to see such a thing, I would think you seemed cool and wonder if you were a kindred spirit.

 

[PurityOfChaos]

I do but that's because I do a mental rehearsal of how old I am about to be approaching my birthday. I don't feel 50 though, I would guess at early 20's most of the time.

 

[Coupe]

I'm currently 25, but I do feel much younger than that. Sometimes this leads to me comparing myself to other 25-year-olds and what they're like and what they're doing, but since I can't possibly be like them in every way (and the times I have tried emulating others my own age were incredibly psychologically/emotionally taxing, not to mention very boring) this usually just ends up making me feel bad. I don't even really *want* to be like other 25-year-olds...I agree with @the_tortoise in that I just feel like me. I am, however, starting to have prematurely graying hair (my dad did around my age, too) and experience back and bowel issues that tend to be more common amongst the older set, so I guess I kind of feel older than I am, in that regard.

 

[Bolletje]

The first few days after my birthday I occasionally give the wrong answer. Other than that I have no problems instantly recalling my age. As for feeling my age, well, I don't know what 31 exactly is supposed to feel like. I do know I am finally starting to feel like an adult (albeit with some youthful traits).

 

[XAND]

I forget sometimes, and often enough I've had to do the quick mental math. But as the year progresses I get better at remembering, because I am deliberate. I tell myself "I am 38" and eventually it sinks in. Fewer people ask as I get older, though.

I have never met anyone that feels the way I do about not seeming my age until this thread. I spent most of my life assuming I would grow up and become sort of a copy of my father. As time wore on I had to wrestle with new notions of individualism and eventually passed the point where I was older than I first remember him. With no choice left but to acknowledge my divergence, and a particular (and possibly unhealthy) reverence for the idyll of my childhood, I ended up in this non-state where my identity is still that of a teen. It's not that I haven't matured or experienced (or become more fragile and useless) but somehow I still fail to realize it. Even my self-image in dreams retains the appearance of decades past, regardless of the years of experiences since. Marriages, children, career.

It also presents some difficulty as I see others my own age and older as being adults, but have increasing confusion over seeing those slightly younger—obviously not children any more, but how could they be adults if I am not?

I still have the faint expectation that I will grow up and "get it" someday but, objectively, that is not likely at this point, which leaves me in a really weird place.

 

[Bella Pines]

I actually don't believe in ageing.

From the perspective of cellular biology, there really is no such thing. Scientists cannot explain it. Our bodies built our entire body in the first place and are self-sustaining and quite capable of repairing any damage There is no genetic encoding for "age".

However, when I see friends go through stressful times, with high-pressure jobs or young children, they seem to age very quickly. Like they seem to age a decade in a year.

So actually, I think age is a more a construct of belief than a biological certainty.

And no, I can NEVER remember my age! Ever, I know it to approximately 5 years, but to get an exact number I have to do the math every time.

 

[Mr Allen]

I'm 42 and starting to look it, my hair's receding a bit, and my beard is going grey when I haven't shaved for a few days.

 

[Progster]

I was born in 1971, but I don't think I'm 47

 

[Crossbreed]

56. My body is experiencing typical age-related limitations, like presbyopia & presbyacusis, but my brain hasn't gotten the memo, yet.