Caring Apprehensive

How okay is caring a lot about someone? When does it become not okay?
It's something we rarely think about. If someone is not okay with you caring too much, the person is probably not worth it. Or that's what we generally assume.

As a normal person we often care a lot more than we make obvious. It's okay to do that as long as it's not harming someone. As long as it's not hurting yourself.

Case in point here is the cigarette incident. Now, I have a lot of smoker friends. I might be a passive smoker too. I am against smoking as a principle and I don't judge people because they smoke. But having said that, I have immense hatred for smoking. Not smokers, mind you, but smoking itself. And so I was obviously pissed when I saw a couple of my friends take a puff for the first time and then go about it like it's nothing new or out of the box. I tried not to be visibly upset about it and I almost succeeded too. I didn't want to impose my opinion on anyone. Heck, I didn't even want to express it! And hence I attempted to slip away unnoticed when the just-puffed friend caught up with me. She started with "it's our life" and "boundaries" until she realized that as a matter of fact, I hadn't said anything at all.

But yes I was upset. I was upset when she did it. I was upset when my other friend, who had said that he would never touch a cigarette in his life and said it minutes ago did it. I was madly angry at the friend who held out a cigarette to them like he had done to me a few months ago. I was angry when another friend who I had tried to force to stop smoking waved two boxes of cigarettes in front of me.

The point here is not cigarettes. The point is whether it's okay to care so much and then if it's okay to display that care or no.

I'm writing this post so that in the future I can look back nd see that I'm not smoking too. I'm writing this post so that I can look back when I get hurt after I care a lot for someone. To tell myself that it is Infact okay. You don't choose to love your friends so much. You just do it. And you do it without being apprehensive about it.