I miss living alone now and am craving to move out on my own for a while longer.

About the self defense thing, its always a great thing to learn. But when it comes to things like rape, most of the time its done by someone you know, not a random guy. While it still does happen, its not nearly as often as you might think. I would look into self defense just simply for walking around at night and the chance of getting mugged. If you look at the statistics for violent crimes agaisnt women, its an alarming number of cases that happens from boyfriends, aquaintences etc... typically not from strangers.