I live in Colorado, a legal state. I am a 35 year old woman. For many women, unwinding means a bottle of wine. For me, I prefer to pop an edible or two and relax in front of a paint canvas, my sewing machine, etc.

My sister's husband had an emergency that resulted in her needing to quickly find a sitter for her 9 year old. I like my niece and obviously wanted to help out my sister, but warned her that she'd probably be bored at my place, since we don't have a lot of kid-friendly stuff.  At one point after she dropped her off with some books, I got up to take a shower. I'm pretty sure this is when it happened.

About an hour or so later, I notice niece hadn't said anything for a while. I went over to the couch to see what was up, and she's just staring at the ceiling with one of her books on her stomach. I ask her if she's okay, and I immediately knew something was up. She said "I ate some of your candy and it made me feel funny."

She had, in fact, eaten several of the sour gummies I had on my dresser. That I hadn't thought to lock up or anything like that because I'm a 35 year old woman who doesn't need to think about those things. Like ever.

I panicked, she seemed fine, I called poison control and called her mom and panicked a lot more. I felt awful. It hadn't even occurred to me that this is a thing that would happen. Honestly, I did not foresee this happening. At all. Niece is completely fine, she ended up falling asleep after asking me for a grilled cheese sandwich with cut up hot dogs in it and asking if we could watch a movie. I stayed with her, kept her hydrated, etc, and apologized at least six million times to my sister, who was horrified and actually screamed at me. Once again, my niece is *fine.*

Even my parents are in on it, blaming me and telling me I should have those things in a safe where no one could get to them, how could I possibly thing it was okay to have them around a child, no one should ever let their kids around me because next time I might give them a beer, etc etc. And I've been uninvited from anywhere that my niece will be, because they think somehow I planned for this to happen.

I feel awful, like I've said a million times, but I really don't think I'm an asshole for this happening. I didn't do this on purpose. I have never needed to lock up my edibles before for the same reason I would never lock up a bottle of wine. When my sister called me in a panic, it wasn't like I thought "Oh my god, I need to immediately childproof my home!"

But am I the asshole here? Do I really deserve what's happening now?