The Candy Bag: On Regret, Grief, and Finally Knowing Who Gets a Piece

I've been thinking about regret lately.

Not in a spiral, more like turning something over in my hands and looking at it honestly for the first time in a while.

My biggest regret isn't something I did. It's somewhere I stayed. Everywhere I stayed, actually. Too long, too many times, in too many rooms where I was tolerated at best and invisible at worst. Rooms where I kept reaching into the bag and handing out pieces of myself to people who didn't even want what I actually am.

That realization has a weight to it.

But I've been thinking about the difference between regret and grief, because they aren't the same thing, and we treat them like they are.

Regret has a self-blame engine running underneath it. It points back at a choice and says you should have known better. It makes the past feel like a personal failure. Like density. Like you missed something obvious that everyone else could see.

Grief is different. Grief just says that cost something real. It doesn't require you to have done anything wrong. It just asks you to feel the weight of what was lost, honestly and without flinching.

What I actually carry isn't regret. It's grief wearing regret's clothing.

Because here's the truth, I stayed too long everywhere because I was doing exactly what I was conditioned to do. I was tracking the room. Reading the atmosphere. Trying to make tolerable spaces feel like home because home was never quite safe enough to just be in without monitoring. I didn't stay because I was naive. I stayed because my nervous system didn't have a contrast yet. I didn't know what real felt like, so I couldn't measure what I was standing in.

You can't recognize the counterfeit if you've never held the real thing.

So the younger version of me who handed out piece after piece after piece, she wasn't foolish. She was working with what she had. She was sincere in rooms that were performing. Present in rooms that were pretending. And she kept reaching into the bag, thinking if she just offered enough, eventually someone would taste it right.

My candy of choice is Good and Plenty. Black licorice.

If you know, you know. If you don't, you make a face. There's no 'casual' relationship with black licorice. People either come back for more or they hand it back and wonder why anyone would want that.

I spent years in rooms full of people making the face.

Taking a piece anyway sometimes. But never coming back. Never really wanting what I actually am. And I was so genuinely, completely present when I handed it over. That's the part that carries the most weight, not embarrassment, not shame exactly, but the deep ache of knowing how sincere I was for people who were laughing behind my back.

The problem was never my sincerity.

It was the address I kept delivering it to.

I looked down one day, and I could see the bottom of the bag.

And something shifted.

Not bitterness, I want to be clear about that. This isn't a closed fist. It's an open hand that finally learned it gets to choose. The grief is real. The loss was real. But grief metabolized becomes discernment. It becomes the quiet knowledge of what you are and who actually deserves to taste it.

I'm not handing pieces to people who make the face anymore.

I'm not performing my flavor, hoping someone acquires the taste.

I'm not staying in rooms where I'm tolerated and calling it belonging.

I'm near the bottom of the bag, and I'm saving what's left for the ones who already know what they came for. The ones who reach back in without being asked. The ones who get it on the first piece and don't need convincing.

They exist.

I know that now.

And they're worth every piece I have left.

---

Thank you for reading. If this piece resonated with you and you’d like support in untangling these patterns in your own life, I offer a free 30-minute consultation. It’s a gentle space to talk, reflect, and see whether working together feels like a good fit. You can book a time through my website whenever you’re ready.