Writing Scares Me

Writing scares me. Most of what I commit to paper is rather mundane simply because to write anything of consequence, anything with substance, anything that could hurt, writing that would, well, hurt.
I have great stories in my past. Recalling them brings up lots of shit I’d rather not talk about, much less preserve in writing. So I tell myself I want to be a writer, but do I really? As they say, I hate writing, but I love having written.
They say to “write what you know.” I know a lot. Really. But it’s locked away. To try to recall details in detail seems an impossible task. To embellish (read: lie) seems dishonest. But aren’t all writers dishonest? Aren’t we getting paid to lie? Or in most of our cases, NOT getting paid to lie?
If I wrote about the tower my Boy Scout troop built for Pioneering merit badge at Onteora in 1972, I would give very specific boring details. I would present the facts. I would not talk about how we all picked on Mike because he was an easy target. I would not talk about the time Marty got pissed off because Kevin and Pete remembered an embarrassing moment from kindergarten. And I certainly wouldn’t talk about how Donnie was always on my case because I was a totally clueless obnoxious nerd who told stupid jokes or repeated other people’s jokes twenty seconds later pretending I just made it up.
In fact, to say that Donnie was “on my case” is extreme sugar-coating. He was ruthless. He called me out for every stupid thing I ever said. He was happy to bring up, whenever he got the chance, that I was totally inept at sports, Completely uncoordinated, and all I ever talked about was rock and roll. All this is true by the way. And being into rock music was ok at that time, except when it was all you had to offer in conversation. If you didn’t know who played for the Yankees or Mets, you were dead in the water.
I could write about my escapades as a serial drunk during college. But I’d leave out all the close calls I had driving, or the time I threw up all over my sister’s house, or all the embarrassing things I ever said to every girl I met and had a crush on, which was pretty much every girl I met at every party I went to when I was a big drinker. When I look back on all this I think, “gee, what a horrible person I was!” and why would I want anyone of you to know that?
I could write about my life as a musician on the road, but all those great stories you hear or imagine about life on the road never happened to me. And to write the adventures of my band mates and pass them off as my own seems disingenuous. Ok, I’d be lying. But as I said before, writers lie.
And here is my problem in a nutshell; I have this whole problem with writing fiction. It feels like I’m lying. And that never feels good. Blame my upbringing. Teachers encouraged us to be imaginative, but I never felt it was something I would persue beyond my school years. Any pursuit that doesn’t bring in money or benefit the family (whatever that may be) is a waste of time. “When are you going to give up this music/writing/acting/painting thing and get a job?”
Yet here I sit, writing for I don’t know what reason. And putting it out where I could get real brutal responses. So a reluctance to “lie” combined with fear are my demotivators.
How do you all do it?