Everyone is an artist, especially when it comes to love. Millions of people paint, from levels of novice to Michelangelo, the same two pictures depicting love; it is the sorrow of its absence or the elation of its presence. Different colors and brushstrokes make up the works, but the images are the same. This is no coincidence.

When a new love overtakes our hearts, it controls the functioning responsibilities of all other parts of our bodies. The one we love becomes engrained into every word we speak, imagined into our empty clinched hands, matches every step we take, and enters our thoughts with every speeding heartbeat. Life is seen in a different manner than ever before, with everything having the potential to be beautiful.

Inversely, when becoming acquainted with the life after love, we try to remove those elements paired with how we function. Everyday tasks possess the remnants of displaced memories, but each hint of a spark of clarity leads to a chain reaction exploding memories in lucidity and dreams never lived into hopeless optimism.

Strangers come together and become lovers, and after the departure they can never return to being unfamiliar. They just move in different directions in life, taking with them all of the knowledge gained about one another. The favorite songs of each that merged together to the playlist of a relationship are now just a rhythm to access memories forgotten otherwise. Fears not realized or revisited until separation aren’t as frightening, but there is less of a sense of comfort in solitude now. Days previously spent looking forward to and expecting conversation are now simply wishing for a single word. It hurts.

There is no hatred, though, nor is there animosity of any sense. People grow apart as often and as assuredly as the tides change and the sun rises. The hurt breaks us down just so we can build ourselves back up and improve from the previous construction. Hopefully at the end both will be able to say we were better because of our experiences together and without each other.

Love isn’t just the pain and elation, but it is the response to the hurt, the growth from it, and keeping the wonderment in a relationship where the fireworks have become dim candles and the shooting stars have long since passed and died.

The pain is as real as the love is. Reconciliation doesn’t have to come from a mended relationship, but a mended heart after its destruction. Just because two peoples’ paths in life cross and merge for a period of time doesn’t mean that path is permanent for either. Concrete cracks. Bonds break. So do hearts.

When the memories from the music aren’t agonizing to recall, when the fears are absent, when time is consumed looking forward to life rather than who you spend it with. That is the reconciliation.