The pain gnaws at my heart.

I am frightened by how calm I've become on the outside. Frightened at how steady my hands, my fingers are as I slip off my wedding gown, fold it gently, and put it into a brown cardboard box labelled "11/19/98".

I can't bear to look at it any longer.

So calm. My body has gone on automatic.

If only my mind, my heart, my soul, would do the same. Just shut down so I don't have to deal with the agony and humiliation my husband's lies have caused me.

The silky white slip I wore under my wedding dress suddenly feels constrictive and I hastily pull it off--still so alarmingly calm, though my insides are writhing in pain--draping it neatly over the back of the chair.

I chuckle sarcastically. My world has fallen completely apaer and my rational, analytical, attourney's mind still worries about neatness, about appearances.

I shudder when, as I chance a look in the mirror above the dresser, I see the face of a stranger.

This woman, standing here, is Tea Delgado. Her hair, rich and mahogany brown, is still in the beautiful twist on the top of her head

"Are you saying you like it when I wear my hair up?"

and the tiara glitters brightly. Her lipstick, unlike her mascara, survived the deluge of tears

"Look, you can drop the woman of steel routine, okay? If you want to cry, go ahead; cry, let it out."

she's cried tonight.

On the outside, I am every bit the Tea Delgado I was before. But like my husband, the late, great Thomas Todd Manning, appearances can certainly be deceiving.

"If you can't find your place in this world, you've gotta make your own."

My lifeless eyes betray my emotion. A tiny fraction of the anguish I feel is reflected there.

On the inside, I hurt so much I want to throw up. On the inside, my heart aches. The pain he's caused me is beyond anything I've ever experienced. Beyond anything any human should *ever* experience. The pain I feel is the kind of pain that doesn't go away. It's the kind of pain that sits in the pit of your stomach, never moving, diminishing only slightly with the passage of time.

Perhaps this is my punishment.

My punishment for being so blind.

"You know what I trust? The few seconds when you couldn't quite hide what was going on. When you touched me. I trust that."

I sink onto the bed and automatically, my fingers begin twisting the golden band on my finger, around and around, until I realize the connotations and my hands begin to shake as the shock of the night's events take their horrendous toll.

Before I have time to even think about the consequences, I slip first the wedding band and then the diamond engagement ring, off of my finger.

I hold the engagement ring up to the light and watch the many facets of the diamond sparkle, magnified tenfold by the tears glimmering in my eyes. These rings are a constant mockery of what I'll never have.

Trembling violently, I stumble to the window and struggle to open it, tears of anger, shock, remorse and strangely, love, streaming down my cheeks in a conintuous flow.

I pause for a moment with my fist hovering above my head, a thousand thoughts and memories of a love that was never meant to be--a love that was doomed from the beginning--whirling through my mind in a throbbing, heart-breaking mixture.

"Don't leave me."

"I love you, Delgado."

"You can have it all. The dress. Music. That....thing in front of your face.

"Will you marry me?"

"I do."

My eyes close tightly and, with the force of a million million heartbreaks propelling my arm, I whip the wedding band and the engagement ring out of the window and out of my life forever.

The irony is not lost on me as I am reminded that they will still be around, carried by the wind or the water or by some lucky passer-by, even long after I'm gone.

You know what they say. A diamond is forever.

I turn away from the window and wipe my eyes.

No use crying for something that would never, *could* never have been. My well of tears has dried up. I can cry no more for him or for what might have been.

A diamond is forever.

If only my marriage were.

end...

....