i read 'if only he had been with me' and now i’m rethinking my entire life
a completely unhinged breakdown of how one book rewired my entire brain
it was 2 am, i was knee-deep in cheeto dust, and i was emotionally ruined.
i finished if only he had been with me and i need to scream into the void or maybe cry into the carpet or both. nobody warned me that this book would grab me by the soul and slam-dunk me into the pavement of existential despair.
let’s talk about this book
it started out innocent enough. childhood friends. cute banter. the kind of soft, aching buildup that makes you believe in love again. i thought i was safe. i was wrong.
here’s how it went down:
hour 1: “aww, best friends-to-lovers. i'm invested.”
hour 3: “why is my chest tight? is it foreshadowing? is it doom?”
hour 5: panic sets in.
hour 6: uncontrollable sobbing.
hour 7: existential dread.
this book doesn’t gently lead you into sadness. it drags you there by the hair and then leaves you to sit in your own feelings. it weaponizes your memories and regrets and wraps them in prose so tender you don’t even realize you’ve been gutted until it’s too late.
how it shattered me (in increasingly unstable stages)
at first, it felt nostalgic. comforting. autumn and finny are next-door neighbors, best friends, emotionally tethered in that kind of way that makes you hope they’ll get it right. you settle in thinking you know the genre. you expect tears, maybe, but manageable ones.
but then something shifts. there’s that creeping, awful feeling of knowing something tragic is coming, and the book doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise. the title alone is a warning flare. if only he had been with me is not a sentence that ends well.
by the halfway point, i was screaming silently at the pages. by the end, i was emotionally empty and weirdly thankful for it. like i’d lived through something sacred and ruinous all at once.
the aftermath: a personal crisis in six acts
for the next few days, i was a ghost. i kept seeing finny’s face every time i closed my eyes. i started romanticizing every missed connection i’d ever had. i cried in public. i sent texts i probably shouldn’t have. i had a minor identity crisis in a grocery store aisle because a song reminded me of my teenage self.
this book didn’t just hurt me. it opened me up. it made me confront how many things i’ve left unsaid. how often i’ve waited instead of acted. how fragile and urgent everything truly is.
that quote — “i think about all the things i should have said and done differently...” haunts me now. it pops up in the quiet moments and whispers reminders that life doesn’t come with do-overs.
what this book actually gave me (besides soul-level damage)
1. teen feelings were real, stop gaslighting them
we love to look back and laugh at our teenage selves. but the truth is, we felt everything so deeply because it mattered. that kind of raw, all-consuming love? that wasn’t immaturity. that was bravery. autumn’s feelings for finny were intense because she let them be. that deserves respect, not ridicule.
2. “almosts” are still real
those people you almost loved. the ones you almost told the truth to. the timing that almost worked out. this book gave space and weight to the “almosts” and they hit harder than most relationships ever do. just because it wasn’t official doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.
3. timing will ruin you and that’s just life
you can love someone with your whole chest and still lose them. timing is cruel. life doesn’t wait. there are no guarantees, no fair fights. and sometimes, it has nothing to do with what you did wrong.
4. regret is what you didn’t say, not what you did
the regrets that gnaw at you aren't usually about mistakes. they're about silence. missed moments. the conversations you were too scared to have. this book dragged those feelings to the surface and forced me to sit with them.
5. grief doesn’t follow rules
there’s no linear path through heartbreak. you can grieve someone you never dated. you can grieve a version of yourself that no longer exists. there’s no timeline. just waves. some days you’re fine, some days you’re drowning, and both can be true at once.
6. the story isn’t over
one of the only things keeping me emotionally upright right now is knowing there’s a sequel. because that means autumn’s story continues. that means you can survive total devastation and still find a way to keep going. even when it feels like everything has ended, life keeps unfolding.
7. love leaves marks and that’s okay
love is transformative. it shifts you. even if it ends, even if it breaks you, it becomes part of who you are. you don’t go back to the person you were before. you become someone new. someone braver. someone shaped by the people who mattered.
why i'm saying all this
because if you’ve read this book, you might also be curled up somewhere feeling unreasonably wrecked and wondering why a novel just broke your heart. and i want you to know that you’re not alone.
and if you haven’t read it yet... you should. just clear your schedule. stock up on tissues. prepare to question your entire emotional history.
read it because it reminds you how precious people are. how fleeting moments are. how big our feelings can be, even when the world tells us they’re small.
and then come join me in the comments section, where we’ll all be crying together and making emotionally reckless book recommendations to strangers on the internet.
let’s suffer beautifully, shall we?