Not a writer, still blocked

"2 a.m. and i'm still awake writing a song
if i get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me
threatening the life it belongs to"

Anna Nalick - Breathe (2.a.m.)

 
Shadow
Theodore
Sniffer
Marcus
Agnes
Hubris
Roothairs
Shades
Angela
Darwin
Wisteria
Atman

I am not a writer. Those characters live only in my trainwrecks of thought, useless to other minds. They've been growing there, along with many more, since my mid-teens. There was a moment in my freshman year of high school when playing make-believe became a making of worlds, and ever since then slivers of my psyche have been growing into their own landscapes, grinning and frowning new faces, making new habits, stereotyping themselves and breaking their own stereotypes. They inhabit expansive interstellar empires or personal nightmares. Some got tired of their initial adventures and demanded new lives, and i keep giving in to them, spoiling my creations rotten, giving them more and more of myself.
Shadow grew from a superheroine to a Jungian archetype and back. Cliche or not, she just liked having special powers. Theodore got sick of being a bit-player in an adolescent power fantasy, abandoned his partner Hubris and sought out Angela in a dreamscape only to betray her. Marcus refused to play the hero no matter how much i wanted to make him into one so i could pretend to identify with him. They're all cowards and martyrs, scheming, reckless or shy, failed heroes and antivillains. A fantasy story turned into a fantasy world. Superheroes became all-too-human social prime movers. An entire world of grays and shades expanded out of my lazy view of an overcast sunset over a city's industrial decay.

All this happened in my head. I can't write. I've tried and failed. No matter how inspired i think i am, no matter how many times i go back and alter what i've laid down before, my attempts have been utter trash, unfit to line bird cages. I think Darwin was the first to rebel, to tell me that if all the personality i can give her is that of a starstruck teenage girl, she'd rather inspire a deep lungful of poisonous oxygen than take any more part in my pathetic attempts at storytelling.

I cannot communicate ideas. I fail in every way when i try, and the ideas got fed up with it and are refusing to cooperate. They're tired of being written as simplistic, pathetic caricatures of themselves. I cannot write. This is a problem. They're not vacating the premises or coming out on paper, and they keep multiplying. The ideas refuse to die or be born. There's a dragon now, clawing his way around the back of my skull, a pitiful, slithering, venomous thing retching fear and sneering at the gigantic shadow-dragon i had dreamt up in high school as a primitive, half-baked abortion. The Roothairs blindly swarm around him, blaming him for interrupting the creation of their planet while Atman waves them all aside in search for a never-materialized chthonic quest.

Yes, Shadow, i know i'm worthless, i know i always have been. Yes, you've always told me, and you've always been right, Shadow my shadow, everlasting, everpresent, ever-me. But please, i beg you, go bother one of the others for a while. Go tell Wisteria she's a selfish relic, go tell Agnes she's a self-centered, shortsighted brat. Go tell the martyr wraith that redemption is an empty farce and hound the moon-mad werewolf packs about their exploitation of Artemis as a scapegoat for their own human viciousness. Go tell Cassandra she's just an attention-whore and call the scheming Serqet out on her fossilized dualistic mindset. Go to Atlantis and deride the Shapers' vain ambitions.

Just stop constantly whispering to me that i can't write, Shadow. I know i'm worthless. I should've known it ever since i drew a blank trying to describe your voice.