Maggie Young Quotes & Sayings

I am done looking for love where it doesn't exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells. — Maggie Young

Even beyond my craving for sex was my longing for intimacy. Matty advertised intimacy. He dangled it in front of my face and jerked it away the second my arm shifted to reach for it. The moment my interest weaned, he'd dangle it again. The scraps of attention Matty tossed me was merely a flickering candle on the other end of a cold dungeon. I couldn't escape incarceration, but I was certain that its flames would thaw my frostbite. — Maggie Young

After months of the mindless elbow grease, incessant ship dusting, alarming drills, and rigid military bearing we were expected to uphold at all times, we were fully charged by each other's friction and on the brink of eruption. — Maggie Young

I lived in a picture perfect subdivision with color coordinated houses and mailboxes, yellow labs prancing within the borders of invisible electric fences, and balding dads on riding lawn mowers. It was the type of community where housewives spent their summers tanning by the pool, half-heartedly watching their Ritalin pumped brat beat another brat with a foam noodle while rehashing Sunday's Bible study between whispers of Susie's weight gain and Dan's canoodling with the babysitter. — Maggie Young

The deeper into this chapter in my life I get, the fainter the hum of crucifixion becomes. — Maggie Young

I can't remember the words she spoke when they finally opened the garage door and yanked me inside, but I was petrified. It wasn't sound Mom's screams or the jolt of her grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me like a rag doll that plagues my memory, but the look of her eyes- wide, wild, and unrecognizable. — Maggie Young

The gentlemanly Number 23 would have never made such a crude statement to a lady. But I was not a lady. Sure, I was intelligent and strong, but I dared to be wide open. I was Maggie Young, chaser of boys, writer of scandal, dropper of f-bombs, tits on a stick. — Maggie Young

Months after my first real breakup, I was experiencing the ego thrash that comes with watching an old boyfriend move on. I was lucky she wasn't a beauty queen. Dissecting her physical flaws was the aspirin that would not heal my wounds, but temporarily eased my pain. For the first time in my life, I managed to behave like a true southern belle. I lifted my lips into a bright smile and warmly greeted my enemy as if she were my new best friend.
With all the phony verbal sugar I could muster I said, "Hi! We haven't met before. My name's Maggie. — Maggie Young

If you didn't grow up in a home that built your confidence and self esteem, make your own. — Maggie Young

The crew did not fit the stereotype of the Navy sailors that I expected. The media always presented Navy men as being GI Joe's in white. But a good sum of them were in their thirties and forties. Very few sported less than two chins, let alone the six-pack of a warrior. While standing at attention, I saw a slew of potbellies jiggling atop Navy belt buckles. I saw bald spots, acne, retro porn mustaches, and wrinkles, but to my utter disappointment, no eye candy. — Maggie Young

Starvation was the first indication of my self-discipline. I was devoted to anorexia. I went the distance of memorizing the calorie content within every bite of food while calculating the exact amount of exercise I needed to burn double my consumption. I was luckily young enough to mask my excessive exercise with juvenile hyperactivity. Nobody thought twice about the fact that I was constantly rollerblading, biking, and running for hours in stifling summer humidity. I learned to cut my food into tiny bites and move it around my plate. I read that standing burned more calories than sitting, so I refused to watch television without doing crunches, leg lifts, or at least walking in place. When socially forced to soldier through a movie, I tapped my foot in desperation to knock out about seventy-five extra calories. From age eleven to twelve, I dropped forty pounds and halted the one period I'd had. — Maggie Young

My parents' attempts to stop my habit were through guilt and force. They grounded me several times. Carl made cracks when he felt that I was eating too much and snide comments on my weight yo-yoing. They sent me to psychiatrists who tried to quick fix me by Paxil, Zoloft, and Effexor prescriptions. All were antidepressants with weight gain for side effects, which might as well have been rat poison for a bulimic. — Maggie Young

I've always had a very binge and then cleanse approach to casual sex for that very reason. We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for. — Maggie Young

We all want love. We all want affection and admiration. But there will inevitably be people determined to hate you no matter what you do. And chances are, their approval isn't worth your struggle to get it. — Maggie Young

I only knew to treat the male asshole as if it had a grenade buried inside of it that could ignite a deadly explosion of anger, trauma, and sexual confusion. — Maggie Young

The females showed their vulnerability by caving into the comforting arms of their shipmates. The males put us in our place through a cat and mouse game of wooing and slut shaming. — Maggie Young

The tricky thing about abusive relationships is that they are never constant hell. You need the good times to clutch onto so you'll tolerate the bad. Those good times are what keep the wheel spinning. — Maggie Young

Adolescence is never graceful or beautiful. Our first steps are wobbly, full of stumbles and spills. Our first words are mispronounced and barely comprehendible. Our first kisses are sloppy and wet. The process of breaking sexual thresholds is far from sexy. It will be a long time until being a penetrator outgrows the feel of a grade school science experiment where I fill my paper mache volcano with vinegar and baking soda, giggling and high-fiving my lab partner once it explodes. — Maggie Young

His real war was within himself. He was a boy dressed as a soldier, pumping his chest, slinging his gun, and fleeing in horror at a glimpse of his own reflection. — Maggie Young

Affairs began, drama spread, and traditional, good-old-boy camaraderie was tainted by the temptresses who represented the inconvenience of feminism. — Maggie Young

But time and time again, I saw the change in their eyes once they'd conquered me. Dehumanization always follows penetration. — Maggie Young

The prostate might as well have been a mythological creature like a unicorn or Leprechaun only acknowledged through whispery giggles among women brunching with their gay friends. — Maggie Young

He practically floated. He spoke, smiled, nodded, and laughed with so much flawless grace. I suddenly felt an urge to push him over. I wanted him to fall on his ass just so he could seem human. I wanted him to laugh, open-mouthed and uncontrolled. — Maggie Young

High school doesn't end after high school. — Maggie Young

Your true passion in life is what you'd be doing if somebody handed you 100 million dollars. — Maggie Young

He decorated his accomplishments with a large house, yachts, and weekly morale shindigs for his salesmen bursting with open bars and filet mignon. However, my mother was by far his prettiest accessory. — Maggie Young

My life views on sex, men, dating, and self-worth were sculpted with the unfiltered ramblings of a drunken misogynist. — Maggie Young

Patriarchy is women structuring lifelong decisions around men they haven't met. — Maggie Young

Southerners have mastered picking, choosing, and rationalizing religious texts to fit their social agenda better than their own mother's fried chicken recipe. — Maggie Young

His unfiltered conversation topics reminded me of my female sailor status: More than a hooker, less than a woman. I was a brick wall he could chuck rocks at all day and not feel a thing. But they hurt. God, they hurt. — Maggie Young

You can't exploit a woman who has based her entire career on exploiting herself. — Maggie Young

I, along with most of the Navy girls I've known, didn't like Navy wives. They were usually rude. They ignored us when they brought their husbands dinner on duty. They gave us smug, fake smiles if they were forced to interact with us. The Navy women and the Navy wives could sense each other's resentment. They hated us because they knew their husbands would probably end up fucking us. — Maggie Young

In boot camp, I was warned about the double standards in the Navy. Petty Officer Hunter told us that Navy men were horny animals eager to stick their dicks in something warm and wet. That was socially acceptable. However, females were held at a higher standard. Females serving sea duty was a new concept, only a decade or two old when I enlisted. I was one of the first women allowed on destroyers. Therefore to show our gratitude for being granted one inch towards male equality, we had to work a hundred times harder for a worthy image.
Hunter informed us that we had to work hard to establish a decent reputation at our command. If we acted like a slut, we would be treated like a slut. One slip would permanently brand us. — Maggie Young

While men had the right to obey their biological urges, women had to suppress theirs until the perfect moment. From television, movies, books, magazines, my peers, and even some of my relatives, I was taught that if a woman allowed a man to penetrate her too soon, she was too easy of a conquest for him. He would move on to pursue greater challenges after he was finished using her body to relieve his sexual urges. If the woman waited too long to let the man enter her body, she was a prude and the man would eventually give up on her. Women needed to time this process perfectly so that she could "keep" a man in her life at all times.
It was the man's goal to catch the woman and the woman's goal to keep the man. — Maggie Young

My self-respect is my biggest cock block. — Maggie Young

I envied the men. I envied the irresponsibility their surroundings and genitals allowed. I envied the artificial affection they bought. But most of all, I envied that flicker of euphoria they got to feel, like a quick sip of whiskey that warmed their chest and eased their pain. — Maggie Young

Males were expected to be ready to fuck any hole they could slip their dicks into. Boys weren't considered men unless they were influenced by their carnal instincts to spread their seed. — Maggie Young

It's not the sickness that Number 23 reduced me to that frightens me. It's how long I willingly ingested it. The last time I heard Number 23's voice, he was telling me that I had a dependency on men, that I'd made him my life raft, that the only reason I put up with him was because I was broken inside. It was the truest thing I've ever been told. Although it was my life's greatest detriment, I was unconscious of it. Unconscious male dependency was the fuel to my Number 23 rebound, a rebound that sent me back to my preteen anorexia, driving me to the vulnerable weakness that sent me crawling back to The South. — Maggie Young

It seems quite bizarre how much I loved one big bundle of all of my demons, but that may have been his core appeal. If he could embrace me, there was a chance I could become tolerable, even passable in those worlds that considered me a plague. — Maggie Young

Even in my most intimate moments with a man, I am alone. — Maggie Young

I learned early on that love was treacherous, leaving my heart like an open wound for others to infect. — Maggie Young

I was used to surrounding myself with drug addicts. They were usually slightly older than me. Most of them looked like they'd been gnawed at by a household pet and tossed in the corner of the garage for a few years. But Number 3 introduced me to a whole new level of bad crowds. As a house painter, he associated with men in construction. Many of them were middle-aged, poverty-stricken rednecks with snuff leaking out of their toothless traps. Marijuana and painkillers were their crackers and juice boxes. — Maggie Young

I milked my typical persona as a gritty, intellectual sex-positive feminist that men loved to conquer, toss aside, and shove into their conquest collection in the dusty backs of their closets. — Maggie Young

The world is not a Disney movie where villains are obvious and one-dimensional. — Maggie Young

But the real show was offstage. Dozens of men lounged along the tables that circled the main attraction. They ranged from eighteen to eighty, skinny to fat, stout to lanky. I saw home in them. I saw fathers, grandfathers, brothers, boyfriends, professors, bosses, and preachers. I imagined their houses, their families, their jobs, the coffee shops where they bought breakfast pastries, the hospitals their children were born in, and their neighborhood route for their dog's morning walk. I saw the gleam in their eyes as the girls swiveled around poles, sashayed in their direction, and sat atop their laps like children visiting Santa Claus. They seemed to love their oriental dolls with a toddler's English fluency. They had their happy endings. They would soon be boarding planes, flying far away from the poverty, the mental and emotional collateral damage, and the possible babies they conceived. Thailand was theirs. It was their escape, their medicine, and their sanctuary of sin. — Maggie Young

Number 23 had plenty of redeeming qualities that made falling for him a justifiable accident. But our connection had nothing to do with our similarities, our differences, our aesthetic attractions, or our emotional and physical needs. When we spoke, he was truly with me. Our egos, our personas, expected social cues, the facades that everyone builds around them that are supposed to sculpt the way the world sees us, were stripped with Number 23 and I. He was immediately my best friend, familiar and safe - an epiphany that I had been spending my life alone in crowded rooms.
Our souls were naked. We initially curled into the warmth of that connection. But once we knew how real it was, we felt exposed, vulnerable, and raw. While his defense was his fearful recoil, mine was dictation. — Maggie Young

It only takes a tenth grade course on evolution to know that the prostate g-spot's existence alone is proof that ass play has been done for a very, very long time. — Maggie Young

Thailand has been dubbed a lustful playground where it is overlooked when a straight male foggily awakes with new tattoos, missing limbs, and a torn anus from a belligerent romp with a transsexual ladyboy. As my shipmates perpetually claimed in defending their infidelities, "Hookers don't count. They're not real people. — Maggie Young

After enough time at sea, all of us would become quite provocative. We spent the time with the husbands that they lost. We hated them because they were the ones the men would go home to. Affairs would happen and in the lonely, haze grey waters. We would get attached. For most of us, these men were rentals. — Maggie Young

As a child of the millennial generation, I was raised in a society in which we were under the misconception that women and men had reached equality. With the exception of very few matriarchal societies, women were more liberated than they had ever been in history. In America's middle class, basic education was practically handed to us. We have the ability to obtain a higher education and career without men. So it took me nearly a decade after becoming sexually active to realize that, as a woman, I was socially oppressed. I grew up in a world where a woman's abstinence until marriage was highly praised and if she must participate in premarital sex, to limit that activity to as few partners as possible. It was considered tacky to openly discuss my sexual encounters. I was also taught that, as a woman, I was hormonally programmed to be more emotional than men. If I had sex with a man, I was supposed to feel some sort of intimate attachment. If I didn't, I was a cruel-hearted slut. — Maggie Young

We can deeply love our poison. We can love the taste of it, the scent of it, the comforting weight of it in our belly and find ourselves woken in the night with stabbing cramps, arms around porcelain toilet bowls, hurling every last bit until collapsing on bathroom tile, limp from dehydration. Sometimes parting with love is essential for survival. I've found the most tragic aspect of losing loved ones wasn't the big boom of the fallout, but realizing later how much healthier I was without them. — Maggie Young

Incarceration is when nobody writes a happy ending for a woman without a man. — Maggie Young

Seasoned digital daters are like lions who have had their prey killed, butchered, and served to them on a tray in their artificial habitat for so long that they've forgotten how to hunt. — Maggie Young

Don't fuck any of the guys on the ship," one of the girls on the USS Higgins warned me. "You'll regret it. You think nobody will know, but everyone will find out. They'll talk shit. From then on, you'll be considered a slut. You'll probably do it anyway, but don't say that nobody warned you."
It was a bit much for my first day aboard, but there was absolute truth in every precaution I was advised to take. Every girl eventually slept with at least one of her shipmates. For me, it only took a month. — Maggie Young

But penetration was a big deal. They protected their anuses the way girls protected their hymen in high school, believing that allowing anything beyond their holy gates would permanently corrupt them. — Maggie Young

My friends were thin, pretty, naturally bronzed and accessorized with bug-eyed sunglasses. They slurped vodka straight from the bottle while they drove. They roamed the streets in bikinis by day and by night, skimpy dresses short enough to bare their ass cheeks when they bent over. They pushed up their breasts and snorted coke in the bathrooms of clubs before grinding their crotches into strangers until last call. And when the night came to an end, they romped through the filthy, gum-stained streets barefoot because they were too hammered to feel the glass shards beneath their soles. The PB girls were wild, edgy, and dangerously carefree. — Maggie Young

Be yourself. And if you're remotely interesting, you're bound to face a lot of rejection. — Maggie Young

There is an air of grace and tradition The South takes pride in upholding. When all hell is breaking loose, southerners face the world with a smile. All anger, resentment, and feelings of hierarchy only flutter in bits of passive aggressive, light-hearted gossip. In southern culture, it is a cardinal sin to utter a single word without a sweet layer of sugarcoating. — Maggie Young

It is difficult to see the souls within the women who stand along the streets to claw for their customers like zombies in a haunted house. We overlook the fact that they are zombies. Their key to maintain a physical life was likely an emotional death. — Maggie Young

I had the girlish, round face that would have passed for a German World War II poster of an Aryan Hitler youth had I worn braided pigtails. — Maggie Young

As a woman, I've had to choose between ignoring the full effect of my carnal instincts and exploring them with a man who will abandon me. Both result in emotional isolation. It wasn't until tapping into the forbidden grounds of the male anatomy that I realized that men are locked in their own prison. Their vulnerability frightens them as much as my confidence. — Maggie Young

We were sexual targets, marked as eternal sluts for exploring the desires only acceptable in men. — Maggie Young

Carl constantly told horror stories of cursing and beatings from his father and the twenty-four-hour blackout screaming of his alcoholic, pill-popping mother. He used his trauma like a caution sign for what he could do if I didn't silence my backtalk. — Maggie Young

It is not your job to convince men to like you. — Maggie Young

I've always hated metal. It's just a cluster fuck of incessant screaming and much too amplified screechy instruments. And head banging is about as good of an idea as sticking your genitals in a bowl of Sriracha. — Maggie Young

We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for. Casual sex is a very sad cat and mouse game. The man is entrapped in his role as the sex-driven predator constantly on the hunt for new conquests, while the woman is the prey that must find her perfect combination of sexual allure and virtue, with the sexual allure being what attracts him and virtue what keeps him. — Maggie Young

Western tourists transform Thailand into its own little planet of indulgence. Time has no relevance and debauchery, no consequence. — Maggie Young

I never dealt with excessive body fur. But having barely made love to a tampon, my privates were truly untainted. — Maggie Young

Abusive relationships exist because they provide enough rations of warmth, laughter, and affection to clutch onto like a security blanket in the heap of degradation. The good times are the initial euphoria that keeps addicts draining their wallets for toxic substances to inject into their veins. Scraps of love are food for an abusive relationship. — Maggie Young

It wasn't really a loud-mouthed, hyperactive little pig-tailed blonde that made Carl cringe. It was what I represented. While his upbringing was battered humiliation, I was spoiled, doted on, and spoon-fed by the world. I don't think he was even aware of his intentions to reduce that child to his own state of self-loathing, but he was truly brilliant at it. — Maggie Young

You only have to be cruel to one person to qualify as a cruel person. — Maggie Young

I grew up missing my mom while she was right in front of me. — Maggie Young

I fell in love with a sniper - a man whose basic training instills psychopathic tendencies. I loved a professional dehumanizer. I loved a man who lived in a world where empathy was suicide. I loved a man who had to be ready to put a bullet through a toddler's skull if necessary. I loved a man highly skilled in burying his emotions, resurrecting them if and when he chose. I loved a man who saw me as his enemy. I loved a man I was disposable to. — Maggie Young

I would take them a few times, feel my emotions and sense of reality fuzz, and look at my mother who had been doped up on them since we moved to Chattanooga. I would see her blank, hazel eyes, and her bright, but empty, smile with chronic, artificial, exaggerated cheer, and become scared. I often wondered if she was buried under layers upon layers of southern sugar. I would make bitchy, inappropriate statements and look for her. I would say something, anything to shake her and look into her eyes for something real. I saw it when she was upset or afraid. I saw it when she'd spot me exiting my bathroom, hair tied back, knowing what I'd done. I saw it when she found out I was raped. I saw it when I told her about the drugs I used. I saw flickers of a real person, but she quickly disappeared within herself once she gathered composure. I decided not to be like her. Even if it meant embracing my demons, I wanted to be real. After a couple doses, I would toss the meds in the garbage. — Maggie Young

My best-kept secret is that I didn't reject normality. Normality rejected me. — Maggie Young

My shipmates and I only grasped our roles on the very superficial level we were taught. We were fighting the bad guys. They were the bad guys because we were told that they were the bad guys. We had to control, infiltrate, and shove our authority around the world because we were its greatest nation. We had the shiniest ships, the biggest guns, the deadliest weapons, and the cockiest egos. And if we thought otherwise, we were vicious traitors. The military condemns rebels, thinkers, and doubt. The military loves obedience, loyalty, and oblivion. Its core values are, after all, "Honor, Courage, and Commitment. — Maggie Young

An eerie aspect of social media is the way the dead's account lingers in digital space as a floating memorial. Friends post emotional farewells as if the departed will read them. But we all know that those words are for the rest of the world as if to flaunt their bond with the deceased like a new car or engagement ring. Just like any material possession that ceases production, a person's value amplifies when they are dead. They have no future. They have no present. Their past becomes a limited resource that everyone is desperate to snag a piece of. — Maggie Young

Children are often like hostages under the care of authority, with spankings and groundings nudging them like guns pointed at their skulls, threatening to shoot if the wrong words are uttered. — Maggie Young

The Navy's use for deck was no different than an aging socialite getting weekly Botox injections, plastering wrinkles with foundation, and ducking into the ladies room to powder her nose and retouch her lipstick every ten minutes. We incessantly slaved away to make our ship pretty. We fluffed the feathers of America's peacock. — Maggie Young

In the privacy of my room, armed with a mirror, shaving cream, razor, and bowl of water, I sat on my floor with a towel propped under my bare ass. Leaning back against my bed with my legs wide open as if I were about to give birth, I shaved everything off. My lady parts looked like a barren desert after a massive forest fire. I saw parts of myself that had long vanished beneath pubescent growth.
Suddenly, I felt sexy. There was something about going bare that made me feel sensual and touchable. But that was short lived. I was ill prepared for my skin's reaction to the change. I completely broke out. My pussy flushed as razor bumps shot across my flesh as if I'd had an allergic reaction to my underwear. It took weeks of applying antibiotic ointment to calm my skin. — Maggie Young

My wakeup call wasn't some light switch of empowerment. From as early as preschool I feared that if I didn't grow up to be the pretty princess men fawned over, I was a failure. That mentality was my disease. It got me raped. It made me feel dirty and devalued because my cherry wasn't popped on a bed of rose petals. It fueled an adolescence juggling starvation and vomiting until my throat bled out and my stomach acid burned through the plumbing. It made me snort coke, smoke meth, and routinely gulp down narcotic petri dishes in hopes of obtaining hallucinogenic intimacy with junkie boyfriends. But most of all, it made me waste my youth chasing, obsessing over, fighting for, worshipping, clinging to, and crying over one after another loser. At some point, I just quit giving a fuck. — Maggie Young

Just Another Number was meant to be unresolved because resolving it would destroy its authenticity. It's a memoir. I am unresolved as a human being. And it also leaves room for a sequel. — Maggie Young

But what has happened is that emotional evolution has not caught up with our economics. We are still haunted by the outdated myth that women need men. — Maggie Young

Carl's abuse isn't obvious. It's not something one can even notice while it's happening. Carl doesn't do you the favor of punching you in the face and sending you to school with a black eye so that you have a fighting chance of being rescued. Carl doesn't hit, scream, or molest, allowing you to know you're being mistreated. — Maggie Young

From my first stab at second base, I became obsessively concerned for my vaginal upkeep. I began shaving the day after I felt my first tongue down my throat. The first buzz was a disaster, causing horrifically itchy dull razor breakout that made me look like I made love to a poison ivy bush. Whenever I thought there was a chance of unveiling my privates, I smothered every breakout with the same foundation I used for the occasional teenage acne face breakouts. — Maggie Young

The idea of giving a man a rim job provoked the squeamishness I felt at thirteen when I accidentally stumbled upon my first porn, Women Who Love Big White Cocks. I was repulsed that a woman would put her mouth on a man's penis. After all, that's where he pees. I got older. I discovered my sexuality and on countless occasions, put my mouth where a boy peed. He put his mouth where I peed, put his fingers where I pooped, put where he peed where I pooped, and we swapped saliva the entire time. Men forgot that the female breasts that ignited their hard-ons fed them as infants. We didn't realize that although the meaning changed, our "dirty places" remained the same. — Maggie Young

I was a meek child who bloomed into something untamed and out of place. Just as I never mastered the skill of walking on my own two feet, I never acquired southern social etiquette. Whenever I was at a family gathering, tension surrounded me. Everyone always wondered, "What the hell is Maggie going to say next?" My mother cleverly masked her true feelings with her pretty, young face and consistent, bright smile. I, as her daughter, was a representation of her. And she was carrying a time bomb in a nursery. In a world where it was impolite to air one's dirty laundry, I wore my most ragged, period-stained panties as a trendy accessory. — Maggie Young

Suddenly, the brave warriors parading to combat with bugles and bayonets were replaced by the push of a button. — Maggie Young

Tagged photos are a jealous woman's assault rifle. — Maggie Young