Day 2 of FlashNano2023. Prompt word: AMORANSIA

Mary was practically perfect in every way. Men loved her. Women adored her. Young and old were drawn to her like moths to a flame. And each time she entered into a relationship with one or the other, she really tried to love them back with all her heart, and all the fullness of her lissome frame. 

But alas!

She sang, she danced, she painted and composed. She sculpted and wrote, brought warring nations to blessed peace. Mary drew broken families back from the steep cliffs of despair and into the loving embrace of permanently healthy relations. She cured world hunger, healed the diseased, and invented miraculous infrastructures and scientific achievements that supported international growth and interstellar exploration. She traveled through the liminal gates between human and fae, but still, she couldn’t find a way to fill her emptiness.

Everyone loved Mary to distraction, and the truth was that she was bored as hell. Her therapist Bert suggested that Mary might be spreading herself too thin. Perhaps, he mused through steepled fingers, her bland amusement at those who stepped forward to win her love indicated that she was asexual. Perhaps, he continued, they might discuss it further at a country café he knew, where the waiters, all tap dancing penguins, put on quite the show and served a pot of tea that was second to none.

But Mary knew better as she strolled out of therapy for the last time. She was discerning, holding out for the kind of love that would fully capture her imagination and set her soul afire. It wouldn’t be easy, this amoransia, but with any luck, her love would be fully unrequited, and she would be energized as never before.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2023)

Amoransia

1. the melodramatic thrill of unrequited love; the longing to pine for someone you can never have, wallowing in devotion to some impossible person who could give your life meaning by their very absence.

Portuguese amor, love + ânsia, craving. Pronounced “ah-moh-ran-see-uh.”