Siapa Sih Ini

 by Ash Beige Baby

Lo pernah ngga sih, ngerasa

lo jadi orang yang beda di setiap tempat?

Kayak… di satu circle lo jadi versi yang ini,

di tempat lain lo jadi versi yang lain lagi,

dan anehnya… semuanya terasa “lo”

tapi, bukan juga

Gue ngalamin itu setahun terakhir.

Dan jujur, capek banget.

Karena setiap hari gue harus “jadi sesuatu”,

Sampai di satu titik gue mulai nanya ke diri gue sendiri:

Gue ini sebenarnya apa?

..atau siapa, sih?

Am I even… real?

Rasanya kaya gue terlalu bisa menyesuaikan diri 

sampai akhirnya kehilangan bentuk asli 

Terus di tengah kekacauan itu,

gue ketemu satu “tempat”.

Atau mungkin… satu orang 

Yang bikin gue ngerasa,

“oh… ini gue.”

Ngga perlu adjust dan mikir harus jadi siapa.

Ngga perlu takut di judge juga

Dan jujur  rasanya kayak nemu pulau yang nyaman ditengah badai lautan

Padahal tujuan gue dermaga dan daratan pulau Jawa

Sementara itu pulau berkeliaran serial killer 

Tahu bagian paling bahayanya?

Waktu lo lagi lost banget,

apa pun yang bikin lo ngerasa utuh

akan lo anggap sebagai jawaban atas segalanya

Padahal belum tentu.

Dan itu yang kejadian, gue kira itu real.

Gue kira itu “heaven sent”.

Padahal sekarang gue sadar…

itu cuma...

Ah,

Datang atau hilang juga ngga nyelesain masalah apa-apa.

Karena ternyata akar jamurnya bukan di gue.

Ada satu “entitas” yang selama ini pelan-pelan ngerusak cara gue melihat diri gue sendiri.

Secara ngga langsung tentu aja

Tapi konsisten, lewat omongan, lewat sikap.

Lewat cara dia nge-frame gue di depan dunia

Sampai akhirnya gue mulai percaya:

kalau gue itu cuma beban,

kalau gue ngga pernah bisa cukup baik untuk siapapun,

dan kalau semua yang gue lakuin itu salah.

Padahal sekarang gue tahu

itu bukan gue. Itu dia.

Itu proyeksi dia.

Dan bagian paling parah dari semua ini bukan apa aja yang udah dilakukan ke gue

tapi ya itu, 

fakta bahwa gue sampai mempertanyakan self worth diri gue sendiri

Well well

Hidup tuh suka punya twist aneh.

Di saat entitas itu mau melebur jadi zat lain atau malah mau benar-benar hilang,

dia justru bertransformasi jadi malaikat.

Baik banget.

Hal-hal manis yang dulu ngga pernah dia lakuin, sekarang dia lakuin ke gue.

Dan itu bukan di depan dunia

Bukan di depan orang juga

Bukan buat pencitraan.

Cuma gue sama dia.

Dan gue jadi bingung.

Kayak… ini apa?

Peace Offering?

Penyesalan?

Bendera Putih?

Atau cuma… versi lain dari dia yang selama ini gue gamau coba kenal?

Dan yang bikin gue makin kesel sama diri gue sendiri adalah

kenapa ya…

gue gampang banget luluh?

Cuma karena diperlakukan baik sedikit,

gue hampir lupa semua hal jahat yang dia lakukan 

selama seabad kemarin

Ngga seabad deng lebay

Padahal gue paham jelas,

Entitas itu yang bikin gue gila sampai titik ini (itu)

(Waktu itu, udah lewat)

Sekarang udah ngga gila

So this is my curse

bukan tentang gue baik atau bego.

Mungkin harus pelan-pelan belajar lagi

buat kenal  sama diri gue yang sebenarnya

tanpa bias makhluk bumi dan langit

Atau campur tangan orang lain.

Satu lagi

Ini yg abis nulis-nulis gini juga

Ini Gue atau Bukan?

Hukum Kekal

by Ash Beige Baby

Tanpa dentuman sesuatu di dalam diriku berubah wujud

Seperti kapur barus yang dibiarkan terlalu lama

Dikira bisa bertahan lama di suhu yang tidak sama

Memang, sih awalnya tidak terasa seperti perubahan

masih saling sapa dan berbagi cerita sederhana, masih berjalan di rutinitas yang pernah terbentuk bersama

Tapi rasa

Kadang masih mencoba memahami maksud abstrak

masih suka memberi ruang pada ribu alasan yang kupaksa yakini masuk akal

Tidak sengaja katanya, bukan begitu maksudnya

Terlalu sering memaklumi hal yang sebenarnya menyakitkan itu bukannya terbiasa malah justru mati rasa

Dan ketika tiba saatnya, bukan mati dengan rintihan malah hilang diam-diam

Dibawa pergi kawanan harapan yang bilang suatu hari aku akan benar-benar dimengerti dan dihargai

Tapi aneh, yang berulang salah pahamnya beda waktu dan tempatnya

Bungkus yang robek tergeletak di ruang tamu sepuluh hari

di kamar tidur tiga hari

di lemari lima hari

di garasi dua hari

Dipikir seperti baru kemarin dibeli, tapi kok habis

Disalahkan kapurnya, padahal pelindungnya yang dibuka paksa

Dalam fisika, tidak ada zat yang benar-benar hilang

Yang ada hanya berubah bentuk; Membeku Menguap Menyublim

Tetap ada, tapi tidak lagi bisa digenggam dengan cara yang sama

Sepertinya, begitu juga aku

tidak marah dan tidak pergi, hanya saja tidak lagi berada dalam bentuk yang dulu

Kamu masih berbicara, aku masih menjawab

Tapi terasa ada jarak seperti ruang antara air dan uap yang dekat secara unsur, jauh secara sentuh

Bukan karena benci, mungkin hanya karena terlalu lama berada di suhu yang mengikis

Kamu tidak hilang dari hidupku, hanya tidak lagi berada di titik yang sama di hatiku

Seperti bakaran tembakau disamping kopi hitam panas pagi mu yang pernah memenuhi gelas

Atau aroma es krim vanilla dan karamel almond dari tubuh ku yang pernah menemani pulang

Kini menjadi uap dan asap

Mengudara seolah masih dalam siklus yang sama

Tapi bukan sesuatu yang bisa kamu nikmati lagi

Dan hukum kekekalan itu sederhana

yang terlalu lama dipanaskan tidak selalu terbakar

kadang hanya menghilang pelan ke semesta

Pergi dari ruang dengan suhu yang tidak lagi berusaha menahannya

Karena Batas yang sudah terlalu sering dilampaui tidak selalu mendatangkan amarah

Justru ketenangan untuk tidak lagi ingin bersama

Glass and Wind

by Ash Beige Baby

(This thought has been haunting me these days
But It's okay now, Thanks to my friend too.)

Somewhere out there, I sense a soft smirk, a careless posture
The kind that finds pain entertaining, as long as

it belongs to someone else.
I receive the signal. They thought cracks meant collapse.

Never have they ever asked what pressure does to stone?

Nature never shapes gently. Even mountains are not born, they are forced.
I believe every hard path my body walks now recently

is not punishment. It is calibration.
And I am not sorry that I am not breaking.
I'll probably just let the wind laugh,
right before it turns sand into glass.

I remember when I was nineteen.

Back then, a cowardly crowd, loud, small, trash senior envious
kept shouting my sister’s name through school hallways
for one unforgivable crime: being visible, being pretty, being admired.
Then the awful came not long after, a severe car crash.
Bones fractured, weeks in intensive care

A body of little 15 years old girl forced to relearn stillness.

When she returned to school, still dealing with her ownself

they shouted again.
This time claiming the accident was God's divine punishment.
I could not bear it, their act and words might think were not harmless,

only worse eroded her safety and dragged her mental ground.
So I staged up to what people called an Open Challenge
Public. Deliberate. Unignorable.
I humiliated them where silence and power

over their coward shitty mouth had protected them for too long.
I even was summoned to the headmaster’s office. HAHA
They sought backup from seniors in my batch too
But none came. I was relentless.
And I was a brilliant student, too. Thanks my brain.
a combination they couldn’t dismantle.

The result?
A public apology, a formal retraction of slander to my sister's name.
And then I never heard from them again. poof bye 

If you believe in the butterfly effect,
That day was my diploma celebration.
My Sister was proud and radiant, but couldn’t attend.
So at dawn, she went to a florist. We took a brief cute sister photoshoot.

Wrapped in happiness, careless with time.
Perhaps her subconscious rushed the road. Perhaps joy blurred caution.
And the crash followed. It wasn't God's Divine Punishment
It was a lesson, to be careful, to be disciplined,

to build a mind strong enough body and soul
for the world she was entering.

Now look at her. A successful young woman.

Great alma mater in her hands. Materially secure. Highly skilled.

A fierce project manager in a major influencer agency.

Even running her own high-rated makeup business.

She is ready.

Then what happened to the wind?
It lost its innocence.
It even  became the reason sand turned into glass.
The wind is not punished, but not celebrated either.
It becomes irrelevant.

The glass remains
beautiful, sharp, permanent,
consuming oxygen with its presence.

And the wind?
Just air that keeps moving,
carrying pollution,
forgotten.

Basis Rasa

by Ash Beige Baby

Aku ngga benci kalian

Habis-habiskan energi aja

Seperti peduli tapi beda quadran

Cinta Benci garis tipis, kan

 

Sekarang aku di basis

Sampai Koordinat nol koma nol

Tingkah laku mereka bukan beban

Eksistensi mereka ngga memberatkan

Keabsenan mereka juga bukan syukuran

Ini bukan benci yang berisik

Cuma mati rasa yang tenang.

 

Melesat jatuh jungkir balik

dapat lotre tembak-tembakan
Selama ngga ngaruh ke hidupku 

kalian bukan siapa-siapa buatku

 

The Art of Detachment : Befriending My Quarter Life Crisis

​by: Ash Beige Baby

I just had an encounter with… something. Or someone. I am still not sure.

But it shook me awake. It snapped me out of a fragile version of myself I once believed was permanent.

This is the first time I share this in public (if it can even be called a secret). So I was in the middle of what people politely call a quarter-life crisis, that quiet season where we feel misplaced in every room, trash, belongs to nowhere, attached to no one. I felt like I had to fake my personality just to exist, and even build temporary shelters out of strangers with small talk, pretending they were homes.

I'm a fool.

Then I was exposed to an idea. A simple one. The kind we think we understand until it reaches our life and refuses to stay theoretical. It sounded easy, almost gentle. But when it dragged me into reality, it became something else entirely.. a wicked, beautiful bittersweet.

Anyway, I wrote this while sitting by the lakeside with a glass of strong matcha latte in my hands, that encounter's impact afterward. Funny how feelings arrive like that, unannounced, uninvited, yet 'perfectly' timed.

This writing will be long. And heavy.

The illusion of control

Most of our suffering is not caused by events. It is caused by the belief that events should obey us. We run the world, they think. We try to control people, outcomes, timing, perception, narratives, blah blah. We want conversations to end a certain way. A Relationships to unfold a certain way. A Careers to rise in a certain way.

But, when life refuses to grant those wishes, we might experience injustice.

I was told about Ancient Stoic philosophers who understood this deeply. They divided life into two categories, what is within our control, and what is not.

Our effort is ours.

Our intention is ours.

Our response is ours.

And everythng else is just weather.

Trying to control what isn’t ours is like trying to command the tide. The ocean does not hate us. It simply does not belong to us. Detachment for me begins the moment I recognize this boundary, not as defeat or losing something, but as wisdom.

Effort without ownership

One of the hardest truths we accept is this: we can do everything right and still not receive the result we wanted.

Modern culture sells a myth of guaranteed outcomes where work hard = succeed. love deeply = be loved back. be kind = be rewarded.

But reality is way more complex.

Effort influences life, indeed. But it doesn't command it. Detachment is about giving my best without chaining my identity to the result.

When I released ownership of the outcome, my life becomes purer and I stop negotiating with reality then begin participating in it instead. The less I cling, the more consent and present I become.

We are not our emotions

Emotions feel permanent when we are inside them. For example, grief whispers 'this is forever', Fear insists 'you are weak', and Regret dragged "this defines you."

But emotions are weather, and they are experiences. Not identity.  I once read Buddhist psychology that teaches a radical perspective 'you are not the storm, you are the sky that contains it.' Temporary emotions lose their power to create permanent damage.

So, detachment is not suppressing emotion. It is refusing to let emotion hijack your life story.

Leaving without hatred

We oftenly believe anger gives closure. I once believed leaving in anger would protect me from regret, too. That bitterness was dignity, and resentment was strength. But anger is a demon. It binds us to the very thing we are trying to escape from.

Now I realised that the most powerful exits are the quite, peaceful ones. Letting go without revenge is not weakness, it is mastery. I don't even need to destroy something to leave it. And I don't need to hate someone to release them.

For me, peaceful detachment is kind of emotional adulthood. Now I refuse to carry what no longer belongs to my future wellbeing.

When energies don’t match

Some people and some spaces simply do not match our energy. That happened to me, and there is no villain in that truth (my bestfriend Ms.S told me that). There is only incompatibility.

We can stand next to someone and feel smaller, enter a room and feel drained, give and give and feel nothing return. That is not cruelty. That is information. A big yellow warning label.

Forcing ourself to fit in such an energetic mismatch is a slow mental destruction.  I even feel my positive energy waste for nothing, yet disguised as 'politeness'. 

Detachment gives me a cool permission. I am allowed to walk away from what consistently diminishes me. Not in anger nor  superiority, but with self-respect.

We are not required to shrink to fit environments that never intended to hold us.

The transformation of loss

Every ending asks a haunting question:

"why did this happen to me?"

It is a human question, tho, a wounded one. One that searches for fairness in a world that never promised it.

But let's just go to the other sides.

"What is this shaping me into?"

"What is this trying to teach me?"

"What is the lesson?"

Every loss removes an illusion, and every ending exposes a truth. Fracture reveals a strength we didn’t know we had.

I once told my sister something like that when she suffered a severe injury back in 2018. Her arm and ankle broke. Her radius and ulna fractured badly. I told her

“Your body will remember how to rise. Every broken bone grows back stronger, as if even pain is training us to survive better next time.”

I actually understand that pain becomes suffering only when I resist its lesson since long time ago, but in practical, it's so hard to apply.

So now i learnt that detachment doesn't deny grief. It instead allows grief to complete its work. And when grief completes its work, it leaves clarity.

Legowo, they say.

Accepting people as they are

A friend (Mr.B) once told me that my expectations were too heavy. I wondered if they were.

Then I realized expectation is the silent architect of disappointment. We fall in love with potential. We bargain with reality. We try to renovate human beings, but, people are not projects.

Acceptance is not surrender nor approval. it is recognition, the decision to choose reality over comfort, truth over the stories we beg to keep alive, the endless night negotiation with fantasy. I can love someone with my whole chest and still admit our paths were never meant to merge, such an irony I know, only to cross, teach, and continue.

Detachment is where the love purified  ownership, therefore I refuse to cage what was never mine to hold. So I can stay connected without abandoning myself.

Some things and people are not meant to stay. They are meant to wake me up, expand me, and leave me larger than when they found me.

What detachment gives us

When I release what I cannot control, I don’t lose anything real. I, instead, lose tension, illusion, exhausting need to force life into a shape it refuses. And then gain something even more, subtle but powerful sources; clarity, energy, presence, peace.

I'm choosing effort over obsession, peace over resentment, and growth over labels.

It is the return to myself after an endless night argument with reality.

The quiet courage of letting go

If detachment feels heavy, it means we are growing. And we know that growth is rarely comfortable, because it's time for identity to stretch beyond it old limits. 

Letting go is not abandoning care, instead, we care wisely.

My life is not a battlefield for me to conquer. My life is a beautiful landscape filled with amazing checkpoints to walk through with awareness, strategy, happiness, and self-respect.

I choose me

That confusion I felt (a stretch between maybe and no) wasn’t a failure. It was a revelation. Because every emotion was human, and every reaction was honest.

But now I’d choose differently, and I’d choose myself. Because not everyone deserves

my rage,

my patience,

my peace,

my royalty

my madness,

my grace,

my 2 a.m. confession,

my chaos,

and my morning softness.

Some people only enter my life to remind me that I am the only one worth returning to. And as I rise, I remind myself to cherish the ones who stood with me in the dim light. Those ones who stayed when I had nothing left to offer

So my heart began stitching its borders back with truth not returning to who I once was, but to the one I was always meant to understand.

Asytaqu Ilaika

By: Ash Beige Baby

Pada langit aku berbisik,

tentang gema yang menetap

yang datang seperti bayang senja

yang menolak tenggelam.

Pada langit aku berbisik,

kutitip satu rahasia

yang tak pernah berani kuucap

kepada apa atau siapa.

Suara itu

seperti nyala redup

yang lupa jalan pulang,

yang masih mencoba hidup

meski tak bisa utuh

Aku tidak meminta kembali,

aku hanya menitip ini

pada angin penjelajah

yang tak mengenal nama

yang tak peduli arah

Jika sampai, biarlah sampai.

Jika tidak, biarlah hilang.

Mungkin ia bisa tiba,

ke tempat yang tak mungkin kujangkau,

atau malah memilih lenyap?

di balik cakrawala

seperti cerita yang sengaja terlantar

Tidak selesai

Nanti bila suatu hari langit menua

dan angin pulang tidak bawa apa-apa

Aku simpan ini sendiri saja

Sebagai rahasia purba

yang hanya dimengerti alam,

bukan manusia.

Dan baru kali ini aku paham

apa yang Khalil Gibran coba sampaikan

وَفِي اللَّيْلِ أَسْمَعُ صَوْتَكِ فِي صَمْتِ الْقَلْبِ،

وَأَرَى وَجْهَكِ فِي ظَلَامِ الْعَيْنَيْنِ

Dan di malam hari, 

aku mendengar suaramu

dalam kesunyian hati,

dan aku melihat wajahmu

dalam kegelapan malam.

Tapi satu yang keliru,

Namanya tak boleh kupanggil

Tubuhnya tak boleh kusebut