BOSTON — A posting on Craigslist has yielded a love-story mystery in the Boston area. The story posted in the Missed Connections section of Craiglist tells the tale of a man on the verge of committing suicide when he met a mystery woman, who he says, after a cup of coffee, gave him the strength to go on.
"I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972, the same day I resolved to kill myself," the man started the post with.
The man says he had just gotten home from war in Vietnam.
"When the bottle was empty, I made for the door and vowed, upon returning, that I would retrieve the Smith & Wesson Model 15 from the closet and give myself the discharge I deserved," the man said in the post.
He said on New Years Eve day 1972, he walked the streets of Boston in the rain, wandering for hours contemplating ending his life.
And then, he saw a woman in a teal dress.
"You'd taken shelter under the balcony of the Old State House. You were wearing a teal ball gown, which appeared to me both regal and ridiculous. Your brown hair was matted to the right side of your face, and a galaxy of freckles dusted your shoulders. I'd never seen anything so beautiful," the post said.
The two talked for a bit and agreed to get a cup of coffee together. The man says they sat at the counter of a nearby restaurant and talked like old friends.
"We laughed as easily as we lamented, and you confessed over pecan pie that you were engaged to a man you didn't love, a banker from some line of Boston nobility," the man wrote.
The man says after about an hour he got up to go to the bathroom.
"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," the man wrote.
He says that chance interaction changed his life and the wondering of what happened to that woman in the teal dress overtook the thoughts of ending his life.
The man says despite not seeing his mystery date again, he went on to live a full life with a great family.
"I've loved a good woman. I've raised a good man. I've seen the world. And I've forgiven myself. And you were the source of all of it. You breathed your spirit into my lungs one rainy afternoon, and you can't possibly imagine my gratitude," the man wrote.
After the death of his wife and son, the man decided to try and look for the woman that gave him his life back.
He said he didn't have Facebook, so he took to the Missed Connections area of Craigslist. There he listed the tale of the woman he met so long ago.
According to Mashable, while the authenticity of the story is obviously unknown, Redditors on r/Boston discovered that it was in fact raining in Boston on Dec. 31, 1972.
Redditors told the website they believed the post's author to be Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Netflix's BoJack Horseman. Bob-Waksberg authored a similarly romantic and beautifully written missed connection in 2013.
However, Bob-Waksberg has denied that he authored this post on Twitter.
So for now, the tale of the woman in the teal dress that saved this man's life remains a mystery.