More Questions on Loneliness

[[Sister Laurel, I read what you wrote about loneliness recently. Thank you. Can you explain what you mean by malignant loneliness and why you describe it that way?...]]

I really appreciate the questions that come my way because of this blog. As you say, recently someone asked about loneliness and what I do if and when I feel lonely. I wrote that I sometimes feel lonely when I have something in particular to share (something I have read, heard, which came up in prayer, etc). I have not stopped thinking about loneliness and the distinctions I drew. This weekend I have been reading Jaycee Dugard's, memoirs of her time in captivity after her abduction. For these reasons and others your questions are very timely. While Ms Dugard's story is difficult in many ways, it is also amazing, particularly for those who are interested in isolation or physical solitude, the redemption of isolation --- especially as a process of healing and maturation --- or for the incredible capacity of the human being to be sustained by love and the hope of love --- even love which is distant or barely remembered.

One of the things Ms Dugard describes so well though is what I would call malignant loneliness. She describes this as a dominant feeling throughout her story, and at one point she says the following. [[Lonely, that's how I feel. Lonely and incomplete.]] It seems to me that Jaycee puts her finger on the reason hermits do not generally feel a kind of malignant loneliness, a complicated loneliness which includes a desperate need to fill the hole, a kind of solitariness which can be anxious, depressed, indiscriminately searching, open even to illegitimate affirmation and validation, and subject to all the kinds of distraction and anesthesia our culture offers, etc. Hermits do not always feel God's presence, nor do they need to. They may certainly feel a longing for God which is profound, but even so, they do feel an essential completion by God's love and this really foundational love results in a sense of essential wholeness which prevents loneliness from becoming a malignant reality.

When I used the term malignant loneliness the first time a while back (two or so years ago for A Nun's Life and some questions Sister Julie asked me), I wasn't completely clear why I chose that term either so your question is excellent. In thinking about all this recently, it became freshly clear to me that some forms of loneliness stem from deficiencies which touch every aspect of our lives. They have tendrils which leave nothing unaffected, and their roots are so deep that nothing seems to be able to touch them and ease the situation. In using the term malignant I think I had in mind something like a cancer which metastasizes aggressively or has sticky tendrils like a glioma and leaves nothing untouched. Jaycee Dugard lived and wrote about the same kind of thing in her book, The Lost Life.

At the same time, there is not simply deficiency but potentiality involved in all this. We feel the lack of something because we are made for it and/or have experienced it in the past. We feel its lack because we are indeed incomplete without it. Jaycee Dugard's tremendous loneliness was/is not only a result of the loss of certain people in her life, but comes from the loss of all kinds of relationships which would allow her to create a real future and share her life. {Prescinding for the moment from the extended abuse, torture, and dehumanization she experienced) her own loneliness and personal incompleteness is not merely the result of being snatched from those that really love her, but resulted from being taken from a context in which her life made sense and could be freely given to others. She was not allowed to be known by her own name, was never called by that name, and she was not even allowed to let her daughters know she was their mother!! (Again, and despite my caution regarding calling many things that are something else, "loneliness", I think it is important to realize that loneliness can name a kind of frustration or yearning that results from the inability or lack of opportunity to share ourselves and contribute as profoundly as we are called to do in and to the lives of others.) This may be part of a truly malignant loneliness (as it was in Ms Dugard's life) or it may be part of a simple loneliness at being unable to share something meaningful with a friend (as it can be with a hermit who chooses physical solitude).

I hope this helps answer your questions.