Compulsive liar asks for help (this is long, I'm sorry)

I have a whole lot of questions and I will be really, really grateful if someone answers at least some of them. I tried my best to clear them from my emotions, because this is pretty long as it is. For the same reason I may tell you my story later if anyone is interested. The shortest version: I'm 21, I'm a compulsive liar and my biggest lie is a bunch of imaginary friends. Thank you in advance for even reading this.
Is lying less any good if you don't seem to be able to stop lying at all? Will lying less and less ever bring my miserable self to not lying at all? Is there any hope for me to ever stop lying, if I lie about twice less than a year or two ago, and about twenty times less frequent than 5-6 years ago - but even though I was trying to stop lying, after 5 years of trying to fix my messed up ugly self I still occasionally compulsively lie? Am I doing something the wrong way or am I just hopeless? I keep telling myself how terrible my lies are and what a hideous, disgusting person I am for it, and reminding myself that everyone I know and love will occasionally find out and hate me - and I deserve it. But it still doesn't make me stop. Why?
Does understanding that I can never say "I will never ever lie again" means surrender?
Why do I feel awfully ashamed and find myself unable to tell the truth when people ask me completely harmless questions like "what's your favourite movie?", "what kind of music do you like?" or even "what are you doing?"?
How do I accept the fact that I absolutely do not deserve true love and forgiveness from anyone?
How can I admit that I am committing acts that go beyond the bounds of "normal" (self-harming, having strange "rituals" to comfort myself, getting a panick attack when I have to do anything social, talking to my imaginary friends etc.) if I know that a question "Why are you doing this?" will follow and I have no idea what to answer except for telling it's because I'm messed up, so I usually make up a fake explanation?
How do I handle a desire to be liked by everyone, knowing that it's impossible unless you pretend to be several different people? How do I learn to accept when someone dislikes me without throwing a fit, crying, throwing up, self-harm and desire to die?
Which one is better - compulsive lying, or avoiding all of the social contacts overall? Is it okay to not want to talk about yourself at all to avoid lying? How do I handle a situation when I feel I'm about to burst into tears if I have to truthfully answer the question I was just asked? Is pretending to be an intelligent person (which I am not in any way, not even close to being) and therefore turning any talk into a talk about abstract matters, like an ability of humanity to build a perfect society or possibility of multiple Universes, any better than compulsive lying about my life? What are the "safe" topics to talk about with people (especially new people I meet)?
Sometimes I write the stories I want to pass off as things that are happening/happened to me in doc files, changing names, places, facts and personalities to make it appear like I'm friting fiction. This is actually one of my favourite things to do at the spare time. But I'm terribly ashamed of it, because a few years ago, one of my friends read a fragment of my notes and said to me it's a complete stupid rubbish and I should never write again. Do I have to stop and think of something better to do? How do I cope with shame, guilt and fear of being caught doing this weird, mindless nonsense all the time, and overwhelming desire to lie about doing something else? Recently, I started to write a story about four girls who spend time in rehab. All of the four patients are basically three of my fake identities struggling with my other issues (bulimia, self-harm addiction, and prescripted drug abuse I luckily already overcame in real life) plus one real who's actually struggling with compulsive lying. And the therapist is also me. (I can't believe I'm actually confessing to people that I'm doing things that are so weird...) Smells like schizophrenia, but it somehow makes me feel better. Is it acceptable to do such strange things to cope with my problems? (I just re-read it and felt so creepily insane that I started to ugly cry in self-hatred).
What do I do if I can not be what I want to be, just because the image of the person I want to be changes in my head literally every other day?
I heard I have to work on my self-esteem to stop the compulsive lying. But what if I'm just unable to do simple tasks such as the listing of 10 of my positive qualities? Scratch that, I wasn't able to name a single one without lying.
Thank you for reading this to the end. Have a nice day.

Hi Juella,
Please check your email from a private message from me which will give you a way forward in relation to many, if not all, of your questions.

Just a few things that need pointing out here though... first of all you suffer from an addiction to lying and addiction is a disease not a moral issue. The more you beat yourself up, the more you feed the lower vibration energy that fuels your addiction and the deeper your addiction will go. Addiction can only thrive in self hated.

Every one of your questions is standard normal behavior for lying addiction and therefore you are not a freak of nature to be outcasted and flogged. And yes, there is hope for you and help. People recover every day from addiction and so can you.

BIG HUG,
Billi