My makeup 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. Furthermore, it fueled an adolescence juggling starvation and vomiting until my throat bled out, and my stomach acid burned through the plumbing. Furthermore, it made me snort coke, smoke meth, and routinely gulp down narcotic Petra 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, worshiping, clinging to, and crying over one after another loser. At some point, I just quit giving a fuck.

— Maggie Georgiana Young

My self-respect is my biggest cock block.

— Maggie Georgiana 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 Georgiana 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 Georgiana Young

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

— Maggie Georgiana 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 Georgiana 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 Georgiana Young

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

— Maggie Georgiana Young

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

— Maggie Georgiana 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 Georgiana Young