on "roommates"

Recently, Google.com capitulated and craigslist.org became my homepage, my boyfriend, my life. I never could understand why victims of domestic abuse would frequently go back to their abuser, eager to forgive and often even blaming themselves for what had gone wrong. As a recent victim of 'Craigslist gone wrong,' I have become one of those victims, returning again and AGAIN to him, begging for a second chance. "It's not you, it's me," I say wistfully, as I yet again click on the "Search" button, hoping for something better.

Last week, I dragged myself to seven different apartments, and quite possibly discovered some of the strangest people in Cambridge/Boston/Somerville. What is it about last-minute Craigslist posters that allows them to be so bizarre? Sitting small in my embarrassingly office-appropriate Banana Republic dress, I fielded questions about my job, my interests and hobbies, and in some close calls, intimate details about my personal life that I can't even share here. It was like an job interview or a date (which ever is worse), in which the question 'Vat are your 'obbies' is asked in 13 different ways, a not so subtle way of figuring out if the other person is a freak.

Probably the most shocking was that 90-95% of the women that I met were in their mid-to-late thirties. One actually whispered, in confidence of course, her true age of 40. Feeling old and jaded was old news to me, especially around my 7^th graders, but feeling young and alive was a different sensation altogether. Speaking to these 'unmarried, set in their ways, starting to accumulate wrinkles and cellulite' women, I felt like the world was full of possibilities (think Snow White calling all the forest animals with her glorious song). I suddenly couldn't wait to get out of their apartment to seize my opportunities and dash through the world, carried only by the seat of my pants. YES!