Clandestine Confessions

For the past 715 days I have been on the hunt for a particular Starbucks.

One I drove to immediately after landing in Utah during my second trip here in February 2022…a trip I told people was designed to show me if I wanted to move to the state.

Truth is, I already knew that answer. That was determined on August 31, 2021 at a restaurant in Park City. The trip was actually intended for apartment searches…and with the hope I would be able to see someone again.

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This Starbucks was chosen simply due to the proximity to my Airbnb. I typed “Starbucks” into my Apple maps and hit whichever one was at the top. Being new to the area, I had no idea where it led me, what I was near, how to ever be able to find it again.

If I was ever to return, fate would have to guide me here…

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It is January 28^th which means today marks 10 years, one whole decade, since my last first day of treatment.

There was once a time I believed I would never see such a milestone. And was told as such by the professionals.

“J, I would readjust your expectations moving forward about the life you are going to live. You are chronic.”

I could have settled for the future they predicted, succumbed to that fate determined by statistics. It honestly would have been an easier existence. I spent more of my life in “sickness” than in health, spent more time dying than living. It was a way of life I had mastered. I perfected being my disordered self and took safety in that.

But my stubbornness would take over, and I walked out of the hospital AMA 76 days later determined to prove them wrong.

Which, as I assumed, did not come naturally. Coming alive came at a cost I questioned daily for years if I wanted to pay. It was a journey of more lapses than victories, more tears than laughter, and more pain than purpose.

But yet I still endured.

And that persistence eventually brought me to the life I was told to write off and boldly composed nonetheless…

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To mark this once deemed impossibility, I wanted to do something different…even if that meant just occupying a Starbucks to write that was not my usual.

I drove to one farther out only to see the dining area was closed for remodeling… (let me add that on the way there I missed my turn and ended up in a random neighborhood full of 828’s and 528’s right as the song from the wedding began playing on shuffle.)

“What are you up to God…?” I audibly asked.

I searched for the next closest Starbucks, hit “GO”, and made my way there.

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Any guesses as to where “there” ended up being…?

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Five minutes later I would unexpectedly pull into the parking lot of THE Starbucks.

The same parking lot where I would sync my phone to Bluetooth in the rental car and the numbers to input would be 828 and 528.

And the same Starbucks where dreams that were lying dormant woke up…putting ideas on paper for the treatment center I want to one day open, for the organization I want to start, for the book I want to write, for the documentary I want to produce.

And the same Starbucks, even in the dark of night, I would see the world in color again.

And the same Starbucks where I would sit and write a two-page letter to God regarding a desire of my heart, pertaining to a person that had radically changed my life…a person I would have never known had I never had that last stay in treatment.

A letter that would end with:

“And she lived happily ever after…not one second late, right on time, aligning with all fulfilled promises – creating a mosaic of divine purpose – of all “good” things…”

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There was nowhere else I was destined to be on this day than this spot.

This was all divinely orchestrated.

A wink from God letting me know He hears, He knows.

Even if things in my life right now appear chaotic and unknown and honestly, heartbreaking, He is in it. In every little detail. Nothing that is happening is out of the scope of His control.

He has the “good” things ready.

The 828 is closer than it ever has been…