I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972

When we're sad, we often get caught in a sort of mental loop. Sometimes getting attention from a pretty girl steals our attention and helps bump us out of it. It's something about the human condition. It's relatable, and that's probably why people tend to find the story beautiful.

There's nothing inherently good or bad about that. Your disgust is fueled by the same physical processes that underly the warm fuzzies felt by others.

The writer has some skills. The flow and efficiency would earn marks as a school assignment!

"scaled the hill with its golden dome, and meandered into that charming labyrinth divided by Hanover Street"

It might seem simple, but in those few words a lot of information is communicated.

"Ironically, the torture of your abandonment seemed to swallow my self-loathing"

Nicely put! Again, top marks.

As an aside, I've noticed over the years that programmers make good writers. Wit, efficiency, confidence. Obviously excelling at technical subject matter, but even so, sometimes it's entertaining. I wonder if the reverse is true? That good writers and literature-heads make good programmers (if they tried). As in, creative code, efficient code, structured etc.

it doesn't take much to stop most death by suicide.

First of all it is human to feel suicidal for whatever reason from time to time. These times are lonely and just meeting a new person and having a normal conversation, no matter how short, can make a huge difference, to 'snap out of it'.

The life force is strong even with those determined to kill themselves - conscious decision making to end it all is over-ruled by some mystery hypervisor deep down in the brain. Guy snatches a few moments with one of those pretty girls that have been ignoring him for all of his life - what do you expect? Life is worth living, after all and 'I must kill myself' gets over-ruled for another day. That isn't about fscking or consuming, that is just about being a fragile human being and wanting someone to love.

Secondly, we rarely tell stories exactly as the events happened. With each telling of a story we learn what is important to the story and what is not. We omit facts that are not entirely necessary to be told. Right now there are refugees WALKING all the way from Syria to new lives in Europe. Along the way some of these refugees might have been given a bus ride to the outskirts of a city, somewhere along the way. If such a bus ride is a few miles and yet they have walked hundreds of miles, or maybe a thousand miles, are they 'lying' by claiming to have walked all the way? Are their stories fake, their epic walk undermined by a short bus ride somewhere in the midst of an epic walk?

In this instance, the author may not have looked for the woman every day for a year. He probably had some public holidays, health problems, bad weather or whatever along the way, so that part may not be entirely true.

You may have found this story depressing but I suspect you are in a minority.