Welcome to Travel Time Stories with Shannon. I'm Shannon, your host from Texas, and I wanna thank you for being here with me today. If you're new here, this is the podcast where I share real stories, the good, the messy, and everything in between, real journeys and real healing.
Some weeks I'll bring you along on my travel adventures, the shenanigans and the lessons I've learned along the way. And other weeks I'll dive into my personal life story, adoption, trauma, healing, and transformation most weeks. I share a little of both because for me, travel and life are deeply connected.
Both shape us, both change us, and both leave us with memories that last a lifetime. This week I'll continue my story of my life with David. Light and darkness collide.
So grab your favorite beverage and let's get into it.
Last week, my story ended with my dad's illness and me being pulled closer to David.
My dad's illness hit me harder than anything I had ever felt worse than the adoption secret. Just the thought that daddy could die or remain paralyzed broke my heart. He was my compass, my true north that kept me grounded and guided me home with his cow horn. Without that, what would happen to me, hospitals became my world and fear my companion.
When Mama moved to Memphis to be near and care for Dad, I truly felt alone and empty. I never told anyone that till now. I wasn't really alone though Sarah was living with me and my cousin Carlene was checking in With Mama Gone. I had to truly grow up. For the first time in my life, I had to learn to be independent by cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes, things Mama had always done.
I had to be responsible for getting myself to school, doing my homework, and going to my job all without oversight. This was a hard pill to swallow for a spoiled girl like me. But this also came with a sense of freedom that I had never experienced.
I have to admit, those first few weeks, Sarah and I went a little crazy with our new freedom until the day we locked ourselves out of the house. We walked out of the house and locked the door only to realize our house keys were still inside. We started to panic and walked around the house checking all the windows, which unfortunately were all locked, so we couldn't get in that way.
We had no hide a key either. Our front door had two small glass panes in it, and if we broke one, we would be able to unlock the door and get inside. So with no other option in our heads, I broke one of the panes with a rock. We got inside, cleaned up the mess, but then we had the dilemma how to fix the window pane before my cousin came to check on us and discovered the broken glass and reported it to mama.
We got out the yellow page phone book, which for young listeners was the only way back then to look up businesses and started trying to find a window repair shop. And praying. We had enough money to afford the repair. Luckily, we were able to find someone available that day, and we had two options. Glass pane or plexiglass.
Plexiglass was cheaper and we had the money to cover that one, and we just prayed. Mama wouldn't be able to notice the difference. My cousin came right after the guy left, and thankfully she didn't notice anything. When mama came home for a visit, she didn't notice either. However, months later, she finally noticed, but just said, well, it doesn't look bad, and you learned a lesson.
David stepped in and became my anchor. Our connection deepened. We exchanged mixed tapes like Sacred Gifts. At bonfires in pool halls in car rides. I felt like the world had narrowed to just the two of us. When I was feeling down about daddy, he would hold me while I cried and offered words of encouragement during these next months.
My days were filled with school homework, talking to mom on the phone and my friends, but nights were filled on the phone with him. On the weekends, I would drive down to Pickwick and spend all my time with David and his family. Home-cooked meals by his grandmother filled the void of mama being gone.
Being with them filled the black hole. I felt from both my parents being gone. His family became my new family, and it was this way. The entirety of daddy's illness. David was a pool shark. This is how he made extra money, and I loved watching him play. His confidence, his skill, it was intoxicating. His wins felt like our wins, and I proudly stood by his side.
He even taught me how to play and I got pretty good at it. The two of us together made some great side money from playing pool later in our relationship. We used to hang out at a pool hall in Shiloh, but then someone opened a pool hall in my town of Adamsville, and we began to hang out there. But beneath the surface, shadows were forming.
I began to feel insecure, convinced that because we hadn't yet been intimate, he must not find me attractive. Jealousy crept in, especially toward the beautiful older woman who owned the pool hall.
Looking back now, I see how pretty I was then. But at the time I suffered with body image issues from all the bullying during my younger years for being overweight and even during this time I had plenty of boys and girls tell me I was still overweight because I wasn't like a size two. At this time, I was a size 10, sometimes 12, which by today's standards I feel is average.
Also having small breasts when everyone around me was large and in charge, didn't help matters, especially when most guys are all about the boobs. My jealousy fixed on the pool hall owner. Since David was a top player, he and the owner had become close. Up to this point. Our relationship had not gone beyond holding hands, hugs and some heavy make out sessions.
I wanted more, but he didn't seem to want that. This began to make me feel like he didn't find me attractive since he didn't want more. My mind, had thoughts as a man, he has needs, and if he wasn't getting those fulfilled by me, then he was probably seeing someone else for that. I don't know when I thought this was happening since we were spending all of our time together, but when does your mind think rationally about these things?
My jealousy had me convinced that there was something more going on than friendship with the owner of the pool hall.
This caused us to start having little fights. Just normal, nothing abusive. The woman pulled me aside one night at the pool hall and talked with me. She assured me nothing was going on and that David was a man, not like a boy that I was used to. I needed to approach things differently. She gave me advice on how to keep a man like David if I wanted to be with him.
I needed to be bold. She told me I needed to set the mood, wear something sexy, and then he would not be able to refuse me. She even offered to lend her apartment as a safe place for us for the night so we could have privacy and I could decorate the spare room with candles and invite David over. I took her up on the offer and followed her advice.
I lit candles, put on red lingerie and waited. When David showed up, it seemed to be working. We lay on the bed together and enjoyed some passionate kisses and our hands were exploring each other. Our kisses were fire mixed with urgency. I could feel that he wanted me and see it in his eyes that were burning with fire, but then he stopped.
He said, we can't go any further. I want to, but I can't. I was confused and asked him why he said he didn't wanna tell me because I would think he was weird. I promised I wouldn't, and for him to please tell me
he remained silent and I began to cry and said I felt it was because I repulsed him. He took me in his arms and gently kissed my forehead and wiped my tears away and assured me that was not the case. He said, I know you can feel that isn't true, and I told him I could, but I needed him to explain it to me as he was cuddling me, he gently whispered in my ear, I cannot have sex with a woman unless she gives me a blowjob first.
I was so confused. I didn't understand what that had to do with anything. Why you can't have one without the other. I was shocked, but I told him I understood, even though I didn't have a clue. He went on to say, I know this is something you cannot do because of your childhood trauma, and I'm okay with that, but you just need to know.
We will never be intimate and you will have to accept that. Or if not, then we will need to break up. My heart almost stopped at the thought of losing David, especially with everything going on with daddy and Mama being gone. I would do anything to keep that from happening. I couldn't do the thing he was asking, not now.
It was my childhood trauma and I couldn't go through that. I told him I could accept us not being intimate if he could, and we spent the rest of the night cuddling in each other's arms.
It had been a couple of months since I saw Daddy and I was missing him greatly. So David offered to drive me to Memphis one weekend so I could see him. . Mama was home for a weekend break and she agreed to let him take me, even though it was gonna mean an overnight stay in Memphis. A friend of David's was going to come with us on the trip because he was dating one of my friends named Angie, and she was in the hospital in Memphis.
She had just given birth to her baby. He was not the father, but wanted to visit her. My heart went out to Angie for being a teenage mom, and I prayed. That wouldn't happen to me because I wasn't ready for that. But since we weren't being intimate and I was on birth control, I didn't have anything to worry about or so I thought this would prove wrong later.
The drive to Memphis felt endless but sweet. David's hand on mine. The world blurring past my heart, filling with dreams of forever. I was falling in love with David and had started to picture a life together with him. I suspected he was feeling the same, but neither of us had said the words yet. We arrived at the hospital and made our way to my dad's room.
His eyes lit up when I entered the room because he had missed me as much as I had missed him, and my visit was a surprise. Daddy gave me a big bear hug and I wept in his arms, releasing all the stress, fear, and worry I had been carrying over these months. David stayed close, respectful, and supportive. For a moment, I believed he was the answer to my prayers.
Daddy shook David's hand and thanked him for bringing me for a visit. In that moment, it felt right and that David belonged there. David and his friend left the room to give me and Daddy some alone time. The treatments and physical therapy were working. Daddy had gained some use of his vocal cords back so he could talk, even though his voice was raspy and weak with a scruffy sound and would remain this way.
We caught up on the time he had been away and I told him stories of school and how much David meant to me. I told him to please do everything the doctor said so he could get back on his feet and come home to us, and he promised he would. The visit restored a little piece of my heart and was bittersweet when I had to leave him.
After that, we spent some time with Angie and her baby and then left to find a motel for the night.
The place David found for us was a seedy motel in a bad area of town, and he said that was all he could afford. I just smiled and made the best of it, plus I always felt safe when I was with him. We got two rooms, one for us and one for his friend. My naive self had no clue that staying in such a place could cause you to catch things you may not want.
But I would find that out later
that night in the seedy Memphis Motel. The world outside didn't matter. The peeling wallpaper, the thin sheets, the muffled shouts from the parking lot, all of it disappeared when David kissed me. We were just cuddling in bed watching tv. When I decided that I wanted to tell him how I felt and gauge his response in the dim room, I raised my head from his chest and my heart was pounding so fast, but I said, thank you for bringing me to see Daddy and for all your support the past few months.
I can't imagine not having you in my life. I'm very lucky and I love you. A big smile spread across his face, and he pulled me in for a hug and kissed me passionately. Then said, I love you too, baby.
I thought my heart was going to explode, in that moment, I made the decision that I was willing to do the thing which he needed so we could be intimate. I needed him, all of him, and I was willing to revisit my trauma to make that happen. So I pushed him back on the bed, removed his clothes, and gave him a blowjob.
It was horrible for me. Flashes of my younger self came into view, but I pushed through and told myself this was different. This was love, and that it was good. I almost threw up, but was able to hold it back, even though this was with someone I loved and something I willingly did. It was the worst moment in my life, aside from when it happened to me as a kid.
I hoped I would never have to do that again.
Afterwards, he carried me to the bathroom and we got into the tub together and he was so kind and gentle with me. He bathed me and he held me close, something no one had done before. He washed my hair and then dried me off and combed out my hair, which was very long at the time. I realized in this moment that I could trust this man completely.
A decision I would come to regret and looking back would realize this was manipulation, not love.
Before I continue the story, I need you to take a moment and recall in my previous episodes where I talked about my special abilities of seeing beyond the veil talking to spirits, and the night I almost died, how the light saved me. My spirit has always been light.
Even in my dark moments, I was still light. I always sensed things, felt things differently than everyone else. I knew I was different. Am different, but never understood it. David, while he had times of good gentleness and love was always dark, the darkness was never far with him and he welcomed it and he knew how to harness that darkness and wield it like a sword.
He knew from the moment he met me that I was light, and this is the reason he sought me out, played me through manipulation, extorting my weaknesses, and getting me to bend to his will without even realizing what was happening. He understood this battle of light and dark and knew I didn't, but I would learn.
Our relationship wasn't just a physical relationship. There was another layer happening on a supernatural level that at the time only he understood. But this night I would start to see, feel, and question within myself what was going on. We returned to the bed and cuddled some more than David said to me.
Now, let me show you how I love you. I want all of you. The intimacy that followed was unlike anything I had ever known. He was so gentle and loving with me. It wasn't rushed. He took his time to shower my body with kisses and tell me how beautiful I was. He traced every inch of my body and encouraged me to explore his too.
I felt so cherished and loved. I was feeling things in my body that I had never felt before and I wanted more. He kissed me in places that I thought were forbidden for that kind of touch. For the first time, I felt what it meant to be cherished. As we touched something, unexplainable began to happen. It wasn't like any intimacy I had known before, gentle consuming electric as though my spirit lifted free from my body.
One moment I was there with him, and the next I was hovering above us, watching everything happening below. I was starting to lose control from all the feelings hitting me at once. He asked if I wanted to stop, and I yelled, no, please don't. I was filled with so much emotion that I felt like it was going to rip my body apart.
I watched myself clinging onto him, fearing what would happen if I let go as I watched his face. It seemed to reflect the same emotions I was having and I wondered if he was also having an out of body experience. It felt like pure electricity flowing through my body and the voltage kept getting higher as he slid into me.
My hair lifted as if caught in static electricity. My skin began to glow faintly as though charged with energy. The air in the room crackled with electricity pulsing through me in waves that felt too powerful, too infinite to belong in this world. I clung to him terrified that if I let go, I would unravel into pure light.
The energy grew stronger vibrating through me until I thought it might tear me apart. It wasn't just physical, it was spiritual. It was as if something beyond us was watching, taking note as if this union was unlocking forces, neither of us should have touched when it ended. I collapsed back into my body trembling and gasping for breath.
The glow faded, the air stilled, and I was left shaken, bewildered, and consumed by wonder. David turned to me with a knowing smile. His eyes glinting in a way that felt both tender and unnerving. He pulled me close and whispered. That was magical. I knew it would be with you. Our souls were meant for each other.
I believed him at 16. I took his words as love, as loyalty, as destiny. What I couldn't understand then, but what he already knew was that this wasn't just passion, this was power. He recognized it. A collision of forces that should never have met my light against his darkness. And yet we did. And every time we did the supernatural broke through that night, I thought we had sealed a love story.
In truth, we had cracked open a doorway and once it was open, light and shadow would battle for me in ways I never could have imagined.
The next morning we were both exhausted, but got some breakfast and then headed back home. As we pulled into the driveway, mom was heading out to return to the hospital. She told David to take care of me and left.
My oldest sister, Sherrie, had moved to Tennessee at that time and was living in my cousin Carlene's house down the street. Carlene had gotten remarried and moved to another town, so Sherrie was renting her house. It was nice to have her there. We had not been close when I was growing up, as Sherrie suffered a head injury and lost her short term memory and had some other mental health issues, which caused her to be hospitalized off and on.
I was glad to have her there. When two weeks later, reality came crashing back. I developed an unbearable itch, too ashamed to ask Mama. So I went to my sister Sherrie. She checked and told me I had crabs. The embarrassment nearly swallowed me whole. She calmed me down and said I needed to call David and tell him, because he would need to be treated too.
I couldn't call him. I was too embarrassed and thought I had done something wrong. My sister, Sherrie called him and told him to come over to her house. She informed me there was over the counter treatment, and she would go to the drug store and buy it for us, and that we both would have to be treated. The question remained, how did this happen?
Once David arrived, my embarrassment had left and I was angry thinking he had been unfaithful. So I yelled at him. You gave me crabs. David swore he hadn't been with anyone else. The only explanation that filthy motel, the thought made my skin crawl, I promised myself I'd never stay in a place like that again.
Still, I clung to David. For better or worse, he had become my world. A month later, daddy came home. He was walking with a cane and spouting off how they told him he wouldn't walk again, but he sure showed them Tune in next week for more of my life with David. My travel tip for today is about group travel.
This has come up a couple of times now when people have reached out about booking a land-based trip. I will preface this with saying it is not always the case, but I have found it to be true more times than not, so it's worth inquiring about or keeping it as an option. It is usually cheaper to book multiple rooms than to book one room to accommodate several people such as a suite.
My example, if you have five or six people traveling together and they want to share a room, I have found it is cheaper to book two rooms and you can get those as connecting rooms. Or if not connecting, then next to each other or across the hall from one another versus booking a suite room that would accommodate the total group.
So consider this next time you're planning a group trip and check pricing both ways. You may be able to save yourself some money when getting quotes. Those prices are not locked in until you reserve, and rates can change daily, so keep that in mind. Last tip. Don't ghost people when getting quotes or prices from a travel agent.
This person is spending time researching for you for free, so don't just leave them hanging. Be kind and let them know if you decided not to book with them. If you changed your mind and decided to go a different route, that is okay, but do the polite thing and let the travel agent know. If you find a cheaper rate, you could give that person a chance to see if they can match it.
Sometimes they can, but not always. If you do this, you wanna make sure for yourself that the cheaper rate you found matches everything exactly as your first quote, because in some cases it doesn't, and what the agent quoted, you may have amenities or other items included that the cheaper rate doesn't.
And if those items aren't important to you, then the agent can remove them from their quote. To make it match or to see if it really is a cheaper rate. Keep in mind also that with an agent, you're getting personalized service, a direct point of contact that can help you when. Or if things come up versus booking through a company, you'll be dealing with everything yourself, including spending time on the phone with customer service while you're supposed to be on vacation.
Thank you for joining me today on Travel Time Stories with Shannon. This episode took us further into my story with David and offered a great travel tip. If you're looking for connection, encouragement, and a reminder that no matter what you've gone through, you can keep moving forward, then you're in the right place.
I hope you'll subscribe. Leave a review. Tune in each week and join me on this journey. And if you know someone who might connect with these stories, please share this podcast with them too. Together we're creating not just travel memories, but life memories and I'm so glad you're here with me. I'd love to hear from you.
Leave a comment or email me at lamkintravel@gmail.com and remember whether in life. Or in travel, keep making memories that last a lifetime. Until next time, I'm Shannon and thanks for tuning in.
