18 Things That Happen When You Feel Older Than You Are
The cliché is true: it’s not about the years you’ve had in life, but the life you’ve had in your years.
1. You’re weirdly offended when people say you look young. In your mind, it implies you won’t be taken as seriously, or that you don’t seem as mature or capable as you know yourself to be.
2. You find you always have (or had) to justify wanting a committed relationship while young. No, most people aren’t psychologically/emotionally ready for their lifelong partnership in their second decade of life, but numeric age and mental age are two different animals. This, you understand.
3. You desire a deep, once-in-a-lifetime relationship – a soul companion if you will – and can’t seem to be okay with settling for less.
4. You’ve always had an intense preoccupation with understanding who you really are and what you want to do, as though the guesswork of ‘youth’ never really worked. You naturally operate on the belief that who you really are is something you grow to remember and understand… not necessarily ‘create.’
5. Since you were a little kid, people have always said you were an old soul. You just have an inherent wisdom, or are more at peace with yourself than others. You’re less wide-eyed and more grounded (albeit more tortured by your own mind, but hey.)
6. You’re a caricature of a young-old person. Your ideal Friday night is reading by a window while it’s raining, burning candles and drinking tea. You may be basic, but you’re about it.
7. You’ve always been made fun of for your interests, music tastes and reading choices, but it’s not your fault your version of a beach read is a collection of Alan Watts essays.
8. You’re inherently maternal… (even if you’re not female.) You naturally want to care for things, nourish and nurture them. You’re everybody’s mom, and people turn to you for advice all the time (near-strangers at the checkout line included.)
9. You find weird joy in being responsible. Your deepest peace comes from cooking dinner and paying bills and a full day of errands that marked your entire “to do” list off.
10. You love learning but were always iffy about school. Structures in general irk you, but being forced to absorb and regurgitate information that didn’t inherently compel you was your minor version of hell.
11. You have a few friends who are like family, but otherwise keep a pretty tight social circle. You can’t entertain or sustain shallow, half-relationships. You’re all in, or you’re out altogether.
12. You never really understood the appeal of “going out” in terms of getting very drunk and partying in shoes you can’t walk in. Bars annoy you – you can’t hear anybody speak above the music – and your version of a ‘good time’ isn’t being belligerently sick for three days straight.
13. You don’t want to date anybody your age, and sometimes have a hard time convincing older people that you’re not like a “typical” [age] person, you promise.
14. You theorize the deeper meaning of everything. You’re just naturally inclined to wonder why. You’re already at the mental point of ‘interpreting and reflecting’ on life, whereas younger-minded people are just out to live it.
15. You tend to love the simpler things in life: handwriting letters, physical books, date nights, clean linens, dinner parties with old friends. These things are your joy, and your purpose, and you’re grateful for every one of them.
16. You feel like an old soul, and regardless of what spiritual/philosophical/existential meaning comes along with knowing that, you’ve just kind of accepted that however souls age, yours has been through a few ‘years.’
17. You just kind of ‘know’ things. You’re instinctive and can easily interpret micro-expressions. You’re attentive and inquisitive, and because of this, you’re excellent at streamlining and problem-solving.
18. Your greatest joy comes from working to make life better for yourself (and others) second only to truly understanding it in the first place. 
