Naruto: A Second Chance

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****⚠️ ⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ ⚠️***
MENTIONS OF HEAVY TOPICS, INCLUDING CHILD ABUSE, SUICIDE, DEPRESSION AND SELF HARM!  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
*****⚠️⚠️WARNING ⚠️ ⚠️***

I am alone. I have no one. Every human being must have connections, people to rely on, someone to support them, yet I have none.

I came into this world with only my mother, yet not even 2 years later I was given to CPS. I was then adopted at three, only to need emergency surgery on my palm at 7 due to 'discipline'. I was removed from the adoption home, only to be sent to the family related to my adoptive father, who treated me like I was nonexistent . I then left that family, to be sent back to my adoptive parents, who had gone through the classes needed to retrieve me.

Things were supposed to be better this time. And they were, for a while, until my adoptive father lost his job, my adoptive mother started drinking, and I was removed from school.

They moved to a small town called Edgewood, which was quite literally on the edge of the woods. It was secluded, quiet, and private. The only person my age was a 3 hour long drive from there. My neighbors were old, country white people, raised in the deep south, something a young black kid who'd also grown up in the south had no business talking to.

My adoptive dad homeschooled me, which consisted of  questionable worksheets pulled from two second long Google searches for 'math for  homeschooling', and having to read the websters dictionary for four hours and give twenty definitions for words you'd never use in the average conversation.

I wasn't allowed much tv, only an hour every Saturday, usually after all the good cartoons were finished, and only old reruns of 3rd rate bs. I soon lost that privilege for some unknown reason, and I had already exhausted my urge to play with sticks and rocks by myself after the 368th time. So I needed something to occupy the time of my life that I later called ' the Isolation'.

My desk where I did my schoolwork was right next to a bookshelf, and one day I picked up a random book after finishing for the day. My life was never the same afterwards.

See books taught me everything from that point; Social literacy, Healthy and unhealthy relationships, idealism, realism, psychology, etc. See anything that could be thought of, would be in a book.

My all time favorite was fantasy, reading about other worlds, other creatures, people discovering new lands, finding friends, overcoming challenges, even sometimes finding love in unexpected places, it was an escape from my dreary reality.

After the first two months, I had read all 39 of the books on that shelf, and I had an addiction so bad, I made crack addicts look like Sunday morning preachers on Easter.

My adoptive mom, who ironically enough was a teacher, had decided that giving me library books would make up for her...
punishments. See she was the one who gave me my hand injury, that thankfully never gave me any permanent damage.

Anyway, I got my fix, and I was content. One day she gave me something different, unexpected. It looked like a comic book, yet it was thicker, and the cover was backwards, some of the lettering wasn't even English. It was my first manga, and I loved it.

It opened a whole new world to me, another reality, different yet just as mystical from regular fantasy, another escape.

But every metaphorical escape ends with reality crushing your dreams of freedom, returning you to the nightmare known as life.

My adoptive mother had a walking stick she had found in the woods, probably about 5 ft long, thick enough that it comfortably fit in your palm like a bat, covered in warts from small branches. In actuality, it was most likely a young tree that had been cut down by the previous owner. The day she found it, she jokingly said if I act out of line she'd hit me with it.