…OK, tell me honestly – do I look stupid? Do I look like someone who can’t handle things? Who needs every single little decision made for her? Because, based on the way people have been treating me lately, it certainly feels that way.

I know I can’t do everything that normal kids my age do. I know I have to be careful and take care of myself. I know I have Cystic Fibrosis. I know it’s getting worse.

But that’s the thing – I know all of that.

And yet, people still treat me like I’m a child, or some half-person who doesn’t know exactly how serious it is. Well, I’ve seen my medical charts, I know my odds. I get it. But nobody else does.

All I want is to be. I want to be young. I want to be in love. I want to be happy. I want to be with Norman. But there’s this wall, this protective glass bubble everyone puts me in that blocks me from that. Everyone is so worried about prolonging the time I have that they’re willing to make that time horrible and boring and barely worth living. I’d rather live each moment to the fullest I can than sit meekly and patiently wait for the end, even if that means the end is further off.

That’s not to say I want to be reckless and make myself worse. I don’t. But I want to make the choice about it, and I want everyone to respect that. Especially Norman. He is the one that asked me out, but he is all of a sudden feeling too protective over me to take our relationship to the next level? If he’s really that worried, if he really felt like it was something I literally CANNOT do, he shouldn’t have asked me out. And if he’s going to tell his MOTHER about it and then throw that in my face, I don’t know if I want to go along for that ride. That’s humiliating! I’m not OK with there being a “Let’s Decide What Emma Can and Can’t Do” committee that I’m not on. I should be the sole member of that committee! It’s hard enough to be rejected by your own boyfriend without it becoming about his mother’s sex advice. What kind of real man goes to his mom about sex anyways?

I have lived with this disease for my entire life and I do not appreciate being told how to handle it. If Norma and Norman and my dad and my doctors and the rest of the world don’t think that it’s the number one thing on my mind, 24/7, that it’s not something I struggle with on a daily basis, that I am not scared out of my mind at what is going to happen, then maybe the people that care most about me don’t really know me at all.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s fair of me to be with Norman, or with anyone for that matter. He deserves someone who he can be with forever; I don’t have a ‘forever’ to give.

But, I’m not going to give up. Norman Bates is my boyfriend, and I’m not dead yet.