Each of us reaches a point in our young adult lives when the home we grew up in is no longer our home. I reached this turning point last year, before my second year at USF St. Petersburg. I was hungry for my own space, no matter how tiny, decrepit, filthy or funky it may be. There's nothing a good amount of elbow grease and a few trips to local thrift stores can't fix.
Commence Craigslist obsession. After several weeks of combing the roommate listings, I found a suitable situation. Two roommates, a gay guy and young girl, both in their early twenties, couple of jobs apiece, sharing a three-bedroom, two-story home in the lovely Old Northeast neighborhood. We got along famously and the price was right; I was in heaven reading Hawthorne on my huge front porch a block from the bay. Enter 24-year-old, ex-military, anger-prone, verbally abusive, alcoholic-meathead boyfriend of the female roommate and my little sanctuary was no longer.
Being that I was raised by socially aware, conscious parents, I tried to reason with him. This only made the situation worse and continued in a downward spiral after word spread in the house that I had caught the "man of the house" (he dubbed himself this) shaving his chest one afternoon.
