As I was saying last week, the past couple of years have prompted a fairly major life reevaluation for me. Yeah, me and half the planet, I know.

Somewhere along the way, I’ve become interested in ecology, biodiversity, and the concept of rewilding.

You’ve probably heard of rewilding

The basic idea is that rather than try to impose our view of what a given piece of land should be like, we simply step back and — literally — let nature take its course. This leads to a balanced, diverse ecosystem that is (necessarily) suited to its circumstances.

In practice, it’s not usually a totally intervention-free approach. You need to be aware of invasive species (both plant and animal), and you probably need to take steps to prevent them from hindering the development of the wild ecosystem. That might include things like fencing out deer so that tree seedlings have a chance to grow, or controlling the spread of plants like Rhododendron ponticum (that’s the single species that’s invasive in Ireland — #notallrhododendrons as I learned quite recently).

Don’t listen to me, obviously!

I am not an expert.

I’m a patchily informed armchair enthusiast, and I’m not even scratching the surface here: I’m lightly touching the surface with one fingernail and giving it a laden look. Read materials put out by reputable sources such as established bodies responsible for wildlife, agriculture, and similar. Read work by investigative journalists and climate action organisations. Listen to a variety of people who are actually out there on the land, doing the work. (For the Irish context, I highly recommend the book Whittled Away: Ireland’s Vanishing Nature by Pádraic Fogarty.)

However, on a personal level I’ve found myself ruminating on the abstract notion of rewilding — as in ceasing to impose human cultural priorities, allowing a system to regenerate naturally. It has really got in amongst me.

Why?

Well, it began to bump up against another major strand in my recent thinking, which I also wrote about last week: the identification of my neurodivergence — and more specifically, my growing understanding of just how thoroughly I’ve learnt to mask and suppress my impulses in order to stay [some perceived version of] safe.

To a greater or lesser extent, I’m always engaged in an attempt to pass, to fly under the radar and not be found out. It’s worst in large groups, where I constantly monitor myself to try and make sure I’m behaving plausibly.

(Glance around… Is this a normal way to position my hands? Has it been long enough since I last crossed my legs that I can recross them without looking peculiar? Will it help me to endure the maddening flicker of that light strip if I surreptitiously bite into the scarred grooves inside my lower lip? Can anybody smell me? Probably not… Can they, though?)

Always, I’m asking the key question my embattled brain has come up with to deal with the world:

What Would a Real Person Do?

This is a nasty, debilitating question, and no mistake. When I catch myself at it, I can sometimes pause and unhook its vicious little claws from my flesh. But a lot of the time, the question weasels its way in before I’m even aware of it, and then I expend considerable energy trying to find the correct answer.

I bend myself into the shapes I’ve come to believe are the expected shapes.

I wear the uniform I’ve come to understand as the expected uniform.

I study all forms of human expression diligently, and I do my best always to use the expected phrases, tone, and gestures.

To an extent, I think most of us do this. We want to be accepted and understood, and since communication happens most effectively in the language of the receiver, we try to send out comprehensible signals. The problem for neurodivergent people (as I currently understand things) is that all these unspoken expectations tend to develop to suit the dominant neurotype. So neurotypical people get to do what comes naturally, while we’re left having to work things out from first principles.

I’m reasonably proficient at that, but sadly, a lifetime of experience suggests that I’m never going to get it quite right. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m … frankly a bit odd — nothing too egregious, but I just don’t really come across as “normal” (HEAVY quotation marks, there). Now, as it happens, I’m privileged enough to be eccentric, darling, but … well. Nobody I’ve disclosed my diagnoses to has exactly been shocked.

I’ll tell you what though, all this effort to camouflage and contort myself? It’s tiring.

I’m tired.

So recently, I’ve begun to think, what if … rewilding, right … but for the self?

REWILD YOURSELF

“It’s a sort of [rallying cry], you see. Never been very good at them myself but I’m told they can be terribly effective.” [—Slartibartfast, more or less]

What would happen if I abandoned my (doomed anyway) attempts to fence myself off into nice manageable areas, to clear and dig and plant myself with cromulent crops, to poison my unacceptable seedlings and fertilise the ones that people seem to want?

If I let myself — my self — grow wild, what would emerge?

Only bad scary things aah no stop don’t do it, opine the headweasels.

But they may be mistaken.

I reckon it has to be worth a try.

So yeah, that’s the new project. All going well, it’s going to get WEEDY around these parts. (And I’m going to try not to get scared into paralysis, which would be very me.)

PS: I just reread last week’s post and realised that the above is essentially a repetition of it, only this time with a possibly useful metaphor. In an act of defiant self-rewilding, I’m going to publish it anyway, because it’s what I want to say today, and that’s the point.