Even if I had expected it, ...

Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. When something that violent hits you, you can\'t help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can\'t trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?
Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?

Quotes from the same author

I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.
But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.
Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.
My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.