I hate Beyonce, I’ve decided I hate Beyonce.  I gaze at her commercials with equal parts eagerness and hatred.  My husband has just died and I hate Beyonce.  Her long, bronzed, cellulite free legs taunt me in my deepest moments of despair.  I look at my legs and then stare at hers comparing the two.  Yep, I definitely hate her.  Her life seems effortless and new, I wear my life like a burlap sack, itchy and ill fitting.  This can not be my life, I’m 39!  Who has ever heard of a 39 year old widow?  I walk through the grocery store trying to make some semblance

of the variety of foods perched on the shelves.  Do I like cheese?  I don’t know, I better buy it in case I like it (Before my husband died he would say I had a cheese addiction, intervention and all).

I slowly walk down the cheese aisle gripping my block of cheese as if it were giving my life.  I make my way to the counter, cheese being the only thing I will be able to purchase as the grocery store has become to overwhelming to inhabit any longer.   I stop in my tracks.  There she is, Beyonce on the cover of some weekly gossip magazine.  She is holding her daughter Blue Ivy and smiling.  She is happy.  I am not.  I pick up the magazine and look closer at the picture.  Her blond hair is tousled in the way only happy, carefree people tousle their hair.  I can’t bear this.  I used to have that look, the look where you believe you have come through the tough parts of your life and it’s pretty much smooth sailing.  The feeling of confidence and joy knowing that you’ve earned your place in your life.  I pick up the magazine, stare at the glossy cover then fold the magazine in half and shove it back into the metal rack.  I hate Beyonce.

I feel that I have had a normal life, but when I think about it I really have not.  What is normal anyway.  You see I was born a poor black…Ok I have always wanted to say that.  I was born in Anchorage Alaska to a young mother and a drug addicted father, who just happened to beat up my young mother.  My mother is stoic and strong and she believed that the abusive nature of my father was just one part of his personality. (She eventually left him after a botched knife-point kidnap attempt).  I hate being a widow, I hate the way people look at me.  I miss my husband, I miss being with someone you know so well.  I miss his laugh, I miss making him laugh.  I hate Beyonce.