We’re seriously still crying. An unidentified man wrote what the Internet is calling the greatest Missed Connection ad ever on Craigslist. The long tale, posted on Thursday, Sept. 24, tells the story of a woman who saved a man from committing suicide 42 years ago and how he can’t forget her.
The poetic post, which may or may not be real, begins with “I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972,” and has both captured and mystified the hearts of millions.
Apparently written by a Vietnam War veteran who is searching for a woman he met 42 years ago, the post tells the story of how this man was about to commit suicide on New Year’s Eve because of his guilt from dropping bombs in war, when he met a beautiful woman in Boston. They both were taking shelter from the rain under “the balcony of the Old State House.”
“You were wearing a teal ball gown, which appeared to me both regal and ridiculous,” the post reads. “I’d never seen anything so beautiful.”
The pair went for coffee. “I shared more of myself than I could have imagined possible at that time,” he writes. “I didn’t mention Vietnam, but I got the sense that you could see there was a war waging inside me. Still, your eyes offered no pity, and I loved you for it.”
After about an hour, he gets up to use the restroom. “I remember consulting my reflection in the mirror. Wondering if I should kiss you,” he writes. “On the way back to the counter, my heart thumped in my chest like an angry judge’s gavel, and a future — our future — flickered in my mind. But when I reached the stools, you were gone. No phone number. No note. Nothing… I was devastated.”
He ends the post, writing that he’s “lived a good life” and that this woman “was the source of it all.”
“A few dozen times a year, I’ll receive a gift,” he writes. “The sky will glower, and the clouds will hide the sun, and the rain will begin to fall. And I’ll remember.”
The man, who notes that his wife and son have both recently died, concludes: “So wherever you’ve been, wherever you are, and wherever you’re going, know this: you’re with me still.”
Tell Us: What do you make of the mysterious, yet incredibly beautiful, ad?