Me, Myself and the hundred other people in my head

I like to think that I am a creative person. Though, labeling myself in the positive is difficult for me -I'm working on that. Thirty years old (yes, I actually copped to it) and I still have a hard time with self-image and positive reinforcement of Me. I allowed too many people to put me down as an insecure and abused teen. I allowed too many people to use me.

I still have dreams, though. Lots and lots of them. But I still allow decade plus past put downs to strangle my desires.

When I was a kid -like early teens- I wanted to be a writer. Like professionally. With books. Written words have been my life before I started keeping memories. I devoured novels before first grade and haven't ever stopped. Just this past week I've read four books. My e-reader is my favorite toy. I read to put myself to sleep, to stop my ever-racing mind. It's a release from reality and I can't be without it.

I have always wanted to give that gift to others. I've always wanted to put my stories to print.

I hear a bit of music, an overheard line of conversation between two people, a painting, a photograph and my mind starts reeling with the possibilities. Characters come to life on their own; small acts jump into my brain, conversations thick with emotions play out in my imagination. They name themselves, they show me their faces, tell me a bit of their stories. Who they are and where they come from I can't tell you. They just are.

I try and capture them but so many times they slip away.

Sometimes I'm able to work on a story line, get down those words or write a character description but life constantly gets in the way. I would engross myself in my own words as I do so often with other people's. But I can't.  

I'm annoyed with myself and frustrated when the snippets of stories thrust into my skull don't want to work out in letters. I get to a point that I loose the objective and spiral into asking questions that may not even matter. Who are these people? What are they doing? Why does she act like such a bitch? Is this paragraph/chapter/description long enough? I've never been to Chicago, how can I write about it?

Nothing ever gets completed and I'm left feeling lost at the end of a tunnel I'd been led down and throughly abandoned. And still I walk around, garden, shop, shower with the ideas and lives of other people scurrying around in my mind. I wonder if it shows.

Is this how it is for all writers? I don't know. Do other people have this problem too? Do they reside in rubber rooms? My lack of completion makes me feel sketchy even considering myself a writer. My lack of devotion to the craft solidifies that feeling. Writers should write. Yes? But there is so much more to me than writing. So much more than comes before it.

So, I don't label myself. I don't commit. And life goes by as I continue to be just me, myself and a hundred other people.