Congrats on finishing FF1 in its original form, it's nice to see that at least some people are still playing the original FF games instead of the remakes (glad I'm not the only one, lol). It's true, the NES version is way harder than any of the remakes. These have been intentionally watered down since it's commonly assumed that today's player base is rather spoiled/effeminate compared to the 'hardcore' RPG players of the 80's and early 90's, so the remakes contain a lot of features to make the player's life easier (quick-save function, lower shop prices, infinite inventory space and auto-re-targeting are just some examples, FF1 in particular didn't allow you to cure Stone status or revive dead party members during battle, as I'm sure you've noticed. All of the remakes made that possible).
So yeah, you can be proud of yourself for being one of the few people to beat a hard 'old-school' game like that in today's age. Do you plan on playing the other parts of the series in their original versions as well?