My name is Caroline Forbes.

Ten years ago, I was a seventeen years old girl full of hope and of light. I had two parents in love and a boyfriend that loved me. I was the stereotypical girl, kinda bitchy on the edges. I had my whole future planned : two children made with my boyfriend/future husband, a big house on the Hampton and a job of journalist that I would enjoy doing.

I could say that I was more than happy, and never in thousands of years I would have imagine what was waiting for me. But here I am. Today, I'm twenty-seven years old, and I'm about to die.

When you're young, you tell yourself that you're not gonna die soon, so you live your life however you want, not really caring about the consequences of your acts. However, you never take the time to fully enjoy your life. You do every day the same thing over and over when your a teenager. You wake up, go to school, go back home, do you homework and eventually play video games or hang out with your friends. Those moments aren't important. They don't seem important. But it's a part of our life no matter what. Every single of these moments make us learn something, whether it is important or not is up to us.

I start to learn about life when I was eighteen. There was a point when I stop caring about my popularity and the future I had planned with Tyler. All the people that knew me thought I was doing some teenager crisis. But it wasn't a crisis. It was a realization.

I realized that I had been shallow my whole life. I realized that I hated the person I was.

I packed my things, say goodbye to my parents, to my childhood friends and to the town that had seen me grown. I left Mystic Falls for the first time of my life.

When we were little, the gang and myself imagined where we would go when we would be older. We told ourselves that we would travel like a pack, Elena, Matt, Bonnie, Tyler and Me. Go to the most famous places around the world : Paris, London, Sydney, Toronto, New York...

Unfortunately, plans had changed over the time. They all were busy with school, future, all the things that used to matter to me. So I went alone. The travel wasn't less enjoyable.

My first stop was Paris. I stayed there two months and spent most of my time visiting : the Eiffel Tower, l'Arc de Triomphe and The Champs-Elysée. I met a bunch of teenagers that wanted to travel to America, dreaming of becoming stars in Hollywood, with the glitters and the glamour. Even though I didn't believe in any of that, the American Dream, I told them to follow their dreams, and who knows maybe sometimes I will see them on television.

My next stop was in London. On my first day there, I met a guy named Niklaus Mikaelson. He was the first person I loved after Tyler. He was my sat aside me on the plane to London. He was different of anybody else. Going from cheerful to sad, he was a mood swinger. But it didn't matter to me. He gave me the best moments of my life.

Although he came to London to visit his family, he dropped them to follow me around the world. How crazy we were when I think about it. He dropped his family, his job, his whole life to follow me, who he knew only for a few month, around the world. And I let him do.

We went to the West Indies together. We spent most of our time on the beach of thin sand, watching the green landscapes and the infinite oceans.

Three years later, I was still with him, and it was exactly like the day he dropped everything for me. We had visit every continent, living like experimented travelers. I was then twenty-one years old, without a real home because of my constant travels and with the love of my life Klaus Mikaelson. I thought that my life in Mystic Falls was what would made me happy, but I was far more happy travelling with Klaus.

But somehow I had to go back to Mystic Falls. My mom was sick. During my time away, my dad had left my mom, his excuse : he realized he was homosexual after twenty years of marriage and me. My mom drown her sorrow in her job. Spending more and more time at her work caused her stress leading her to severe anxiety. Few months later, several tumor were found on her lungs.

My mom had lived half of her life when she died. I never had been close to her, but an indescribable and insuperable pain submerged me. Klaus help me to organize the funerals of my mom. I was wrecked that day. All the gang, Elena, Matt, Bonnie, and even Tyler, had came to support me.

After that event, I stayed a while in Mystic Falls with Klaus. I showed him all the places I loved when I was little. In three years, absolutely nothing had changed.

I went back in my childhood house. Thousands of memories assaulted me when I came in : from familial moments with both my mom and my dad to slumber party with Bonnie and Elena, passing by barbecue with the whole town or by my first bike.

All the things that I refused to reckon when I was away came back to me. A single tear wet my face and Klaus hugged me.

Now that I'm about to die, this is the memory I want to keep. Me and Klaus hugging in my childhood. It represents my whole life. In the end, he is the only one there for me.

When I was twenty-three, I learned that I had contract Cystic Fibrosis. Unfortunately for me, this inherited disease is quite rare, there isn't lots of research done about it. The Cystic Fibrosis mainly affects the lungs, pancreas, liver, intestines, sinuses, and sex organs. Mucus builds up in your lungs and blocks your airways, which make it easy for any bacteria to grow, causing lungs infection.

Awareness about it wasn't big at the time, and it still isn't.

I had trouble to breath, I was always tired and weak. I stopped traveling. I moved in my childhood house with Klaus. Even during sickness he was there. We had been through so much together, it's basically as if we were married.

This was how my life was before. Family, friends, school, travels, Klaus. All the elements that had built my short life.

Now my life was hospitals, disease, troubles, bunch of blood... And Klaus.

My name is Caroline Forbes and I'm about to die. And the only one by my side is Klaus Mikaelson. The love of my life.

After everything that has happened to me, even after such a short period, I can say : I lived.

A/N : This story is inspired by a song of One Republic called I Lived. You should watch the clip of it, it's been conceived to raise awareness to Cystic Fibrosis and it explain how the people with CF live everyday. You need to know that CF leads to death only rarely.

You can also learn more and/or donate for research on the official site of cff.

If you ever write a story to raise awareness, PM me.

Thanks for reading.