Why are you (not) an author?

At what point can you call yourself an author? Do you have to be published? And if you are not published, what’s stopping you? I have been an introverted bookworm since I was little. Spending the weekend under the covers, my life lived in the magical world of witches and warlocks. My father had an old typewriter. The ones that make a lot of noise when you write, and «ding» when your move to the next sentence. I wrote my first story on this machine, a detective short story (because… Nancy Drew). Proudly showing my story to my parents, who laughed. I learned later that they laughed because they were surprised by my imagination, not because the story was bad. But the young mind continued her stories, but never again showed them to anyone. In middle school I did well. We were asked to write fairy tales and short stories, and my pieces were always read by the teacher. I was so proud, and I decided to aim for university, studying English to then study writing. However, things never worked out that way. In high school we were not allowed to use our imaginations. We read poetry but picked it apart into sentence structure and verse form. Something blocked my brain. The stories continued, but I just couldn’t get them to come alive on paper anymore. I became an engineer, and i lived through other peoples’ stories. But every night as i went to bed, I slipped back into my own world of angels, vampires, and fairies. I have struggled with the decision to try again. Terrified that people will laugh, that they will pick apart the world in my mind like my teachers picked apart poetry. My belief in my own story came to life when I summarized the plot to a friend of mine, to get some help with a part of the plot I couldn’t work out. And she cried. She cried where I had cried. And even if I am still too shy about my work to ever show my friends or family, even if no one buys my book and it only collects dust in my own bookshelf. I have decided that my story deserves to be told and printed. Do you, or did you, have publishing fears? If you do, what is stopping you? If you did, how did you overcome it?