Up to You

The other day, I found an old binder amongst my stuff. It was my drawing binder from when I was a kid. All the drawings and sketches I did on notebook paper ended up in this binder. I was going through it for the fun of it. A lot of drawings are objects from my childhood room, fanfic daydreams from games I used to play, or characters from shows I used to watch. I will say, the drawings improve with skill the further into the binder you go–which is a relief to me.

It made me smile seeing all the pictures in that binder. Even back then, I was crafting stories. Whether fanfiction or ideas of my own. Some of the pictures have captions that explain the story that goes with the drawing or who the character is and why they’re there. I even left myself a cliffhanger: A cute little story of boy and girl meet at a small town high school dance, they date for years, but she leaves to the city to chase her dreams. After years of being apart, the girl stops in that small town one night and hesitates outside his front door. She’s afraid to knock because she’s afraid her departure left him too hurt to want her back.

That’s it.

It’s a simple story and a common one, but I didn’t give it an ending. Does she knock on the door? Does he answer? Does she chicken out and leave? Who knows?

Perhaps, I left it like that for a reason? Some stories don’t need endings because then it’s left to the imagination of the one enjoying the story. You can decide the relationship between the boy and the girl. You can decide if she’s brave enough to knock on the door and if he’s not bitter enough to answer. Perhaps the boy was praying she’d come back? Perhaps he’d spit in her face? It’s all up to you.