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// (12) Big Empty 
// Story: Coming Out Of My Cage 
// by Boopy Doopy 
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Katrina hummed to herself happily as she and Twilight walked back, keeping her new dress on the whole time, admiring the colors as she walked.
“My dress,” she thought to herself with a smile. “This is my dress. It was made for me because I’m a girl.” It was a silly thought, but one that made her happy regardless. She felt so happy that the people here saw her as she was for the first time.
“Remember to take it off before you step through, Katrina,” Twilight instructed when the two of them got back to her castle. “I’m not sure the worldgate will process that you’re bringing that through with you if you don’t.”
“Okay, I understand,” she replied as the mare helped her slip out of it, setting it on her back to carry it through. Before she left though, she made her way up to Twilight and wrapped her hooves around her. The alicorn was surprised by the move, but accepted her offer anyway, hugging her tightly.
“Thank you so much,” Katrina told her as she placed her neck to the mare’s. “Being here- it’s absolutely amazing. Even though it’s as a pony, I’m having the time of my life just being able to feel like myself for the first time in my life. Thank you so much for all of this.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” Twilight replied gently. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your time here. I was worried that the person whose home we picked to build the worldgate at would be upset or angry. I’m glad to see you so happy.”
“Thank you so, so much,” Katrina replied again, hugging her for a few seconds more before letting go and turning around to head back to Earth. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and probably every day from now on,” she said as she waved a hoof before stepping through the door back into the closet. She took a breath and let the nice feeling wash over herself before once again going through the portal, changing back into her old self.
She did her best to avoid looking at her body as she held the dress up to inspect it, noticing that it looked just as nice on this side as it did in Equestria. It felt just as nice and silky and still shimmered in the light as she examined it. It was still very lovely, and luckily had changed to a shape more suited for a human than a pony now.
“This is my dress,” she whispered happily as she held it up. “I actually own a dress. It belongs to me. Oh my gosh, this is amazing.”
She smiled happily at the thought, imagining how nice it would be to one day go out in public and be able to wear it. She could see herself getting compliments on it already, made all the better that it wouldn’t even be someone else’s clothes she would have to wear. This was her dress.
Before she could stop herself, she was in the bathroom, quickly switching out of her old clothes and into the dress, seeing how it looked on her in the mirror. It took her all of one second however to realize that that was a mistake.
“This looks so bad on me,” she frowned, feeling like the niceness of the dress contrasted greatly against her grotesque body. Shoulders too wide, hips too narrow, a face that didn’t match the dress at all. Seeing it on her made her look that much worse and highlighted even more what she hated about herself. It looked so nice on her in Equestria, but here…
Before she could help herself, she was crying again, sitting on the bathroom floor with her head in her hands. It was something she would never be on this side, no matter how much she tried. Her body was too ugly and mangled to ever be changed, the dress she wore being proof of that.
She needed to stop going through that portal. She knew after the first time she went through that it wouldn’t help her and would only make her feel worse, and now she had proof. Even as much relief as it provided, it was only intensifying her feelings when she was forced to step into her body again. It humored her with what she could be, and then took it away from her each time she came back. If she could only be a human on that side, it would be so much easier for her.
She leaned against the bathtub as she cried, letting the feeling of the fabric against her skin start to soothe her. It was still a very nice dress, and she tried to hang on to the niceness that she got when she thought about how it belonged to her. It still meant that she was a girl, otherwise Rarity wouldn’t have gone out of her way to sew her one, would she?
“Except I’m a completely deformed and disfigured looking one,” she thought painfully. “I’m absolutely hideous and am ruining her gift with my body. I look like a monster in it.”
She looked up in the mirror and caught a glimpse of her long blonde hair and brown eyes, probably the only things that she kept between here and there. It was definitely the only thing she could say she didn’t completely hate about herself. She couldn’t help but imagine that maybe something could be done that would turn her into what she wanted to be. She could almost maybe see it. Of course, it was something that was never going to happen because she was never going to give in on staying hidden in real life.
“God, I’m being so fucking selfish,” she said aloud to herself as she cried, feeling the pain that hearing her voice brought. “I have almost exactly what I want on that side and I’m still so concerned about what I am over here. Why can’t I just accept what I can’t have and be satisfied with coming close?”
She closed her eyes as she continued to cry. It wasn’t fair for her to be so broken. It wasn’t fair that she had to know exactly what was wrong with her and have nothing that she could do about it.
“There is something you can do about it,” she reminded herself. “You’re just being a coward. Are you really going to let the fact that you have to explain who you are to a few people stop you? Are you really going to convince yourself that nothing is better than something at all?”
As nice as it felt to say who she was and talk about with other people, she wasn’t ever going to come out on Earth, not in real life. She already had something after all. It was a place through a trapdoor in her closet. She could use that as a break from reality as she managed her dysphoria for…
“For the rest of my life I guess…” she whispered quietly as she wiped her eyes and stood up, carefully removing her dress and hanging it up in her closet. “I should be happy that I at least have a place where it melts away, even if it’s uncomfortable being a pony, even if it feels like roleplaying. I’m better off than most other people.”
With that thought, Katrina hopped into bed and let the night pass, concentrating on working and talking to her friends and other things, doing her best to not think about herself. At one point, Sylvia asked her about the dress, to which her only reply was that she didn’t want to talk about it.
Before long, she was waking up in the afternoon again, the urge to immediately head to Equestria strong. However, unlike before, this time she managed to keep herself in place, resisting the urge. As lovely as the feeling was, going through that portal was bad for her and would only make her feel worse again when she came back through. She was managing herself just fine before it appeared, and maybe she could start managing again.
She didn’t do anything for the first couple of hours of the afternoon, mostly just staring up at her ceiling as she lay in bed, forcing herself to not get up to go through. Eventually, to try to distract herself, she opened up her laptop, seeing a message from Sylvia at the top of her list of notifications.
“I wanted to tell you this yesterday,” Katrina read, “but I didn’t think you were in the mood to hear it. But I want to say that I know how you feel. Acknowledging yourself, it’s gonna make the dysphoria worse. You’re going to start to see the little things that are wrong with you, and the more you see, the more it’ll hurt and the more you’ll want to change it.” 
That was probably the truest thing she’d ever heard. She told herself nearly exactly that when she first willingly changed herself. She knew it was opening a door that wouldn’t be closed, and she did it anyway. It was her own fault she felt so bad right then. She knew it would hurt, and she did it anyway, even if it was partially to help Twilight get back through to her side. She should’ve known better.
“I think the height of my dysphoria came just after I bought my first dress. It was as though suddenly every little thing became noticeable wearing it. I was on the fence before about it, thinking that maybe I could manage, but after that, I decided that I wasn’t going to keep living my life as I was. It took time, but eventually, I got the strength to come out, and now here I am. I’m much better off now than I was back then.”
Katrina couldn’t help but sigh at that, sending back, “It’ll never be me. I look so bad, but even if I transition, I’m still going to be ugly. It doesn’t help that I waited too long to say it and am way too old now. And even if I weren’t… I just can’t do it. I want to feel better, but I can’t do it.”
Once again, she had to think to herself that as nice as it felt to come out, it was something she could never do in real life. Even if she were guaranteed to be something other than what she was, it was something she would never ever do. She couldn’t.
“I doubt you’re older than me,” Sylvia replied. “I started transitioning when I was thirty-six. I might not look the best, but you have to take what you can get, as hard as it is to accept. It might not have everything I’ve wanted, but I feel much better than I ever have in my whole life. I can say that without a shadow of a doubt.”
It was the very same thing Twilight told her, roughly anyway, except it felt more true coming from Sylvia. Still, Katrina didn’t know how much she could believe her. If she wasn’t even sure she could come out if she got exactly what she wanted, she wasn’t sure only getting part of what she wanted would be worth it at all.
“I’m telling you now, if you do transition, it’s going to be awkward as hell,” the message continued. “You’re going to be eight months in and thinking you look nothing like a man and hardly like a woman at all, but that feeling will go away with time as your body keeps changing. But even then, it was so exciting to just see that something was happening. To be able to look in the mirror and see myself? It was absolutely worth it, even if I know I won’t ever exactly look like a cis woman.”
Katrina wanted to believe her, she really did, but she couldn’t. She knew how nice it was to look in the mirror and like what she saw, but she wasn’t sure that would ever happen on Earth, no matter what she did. 
“If you don’t mind, can I see what you look like?” Sylvia asked. “I can send a picture of myself, too, before and after I started transitioning, if you’re interested.”
Katrina absolutely hated pictures. There were probably less than fifty of them in existence that contained her, and under ten of her time between age thirteen and twenty-six. Still, she obliged, turning on her webcam and snapping a photo, red eyes, masculine face, and all. She briefly wondered if she should be doing this, if her secrets might leak out into real life. But then she remembered that she had almost no real life friends, and she didn’t think her family would be using Discord any time soon.
“Girl, you already look extremely feminine,” Sylvia told her a few minutes after she sent her the picture. “You’re, like, practically three-quarters of the way there. A little estrogen magic and you’d look exactly like a cis girl, let me tell you.”
It felt like a lie, and if it wasn’t, she didn’t see whatever Sylvia saw. When she looked in the mirror, she saw someone who was terribly masculine, someone who made her want to cry looking at them.
A minute later, Sylvia sent a couple of pictures of herself, one that she labeled as four years ago and one marked today. Katrina nearly gasped at the contrast, almost convinced that she was actually looking at two separate people. Whoever the man was that Sylvia posted next to her picture, the one with the thick beard and bored look that had misery written in his eyes- it couldn’t have possibly been her with how amazing she looked. Curly dark hair and green eyes, a dark red shirt on and skinny jeans- she was jealous looking at it. She almost felt like she was being lied to, because if that was what ‘not looking the best’ was, she would absolutely take it every day of the week over what she had now.
“I don’t know why you said you don’t look the greatest,” Katrina told her. “You look absolutely amazing. I’m jealous just looking at those pictures. There is no way that could possibly be you.”
“Awwww, thanks! You do, too, honestly! I don’t know if you’re presenting feminine intentionally or not, but you look remarkable! If you transitioned, you’d look absolutely amazing.”
She appreciated the kind words, but didn’t believe her. She was certain that she would look like nothing more than an ugly man who was pretending no matter what she did, and it made her want to cry again. Still, maybe there was a small chance that something could be done to help her. If she looked even half as good as Sylvia did, it would be more than she could ever ask for.
“But what if I keep hating myself?” she asked. “I’m so, so afraid that I’m going to start to transition and the dysphoria won’t go away, or even worse, that I won’t like it. I know it’s silly, and I know that I absolutely want it, but I’m absolutely afraid.”
 The dysphoria hadn’t reached her in Equestria up to that point, but she still couldn’t help but think that it was only a matter of time when it would. It was different on that side though because she hardly had any stakes. All she would have to do if she hurt herself on that side was walk through a door and return to her home. If she transitioned on Earth though and the dysphoria remained, she would have completely ruined her life for no reason at all. It was a thought she couldn’t bear, and she had no idea what she’d do if that happened.
“I think if you thought that, you’d stop well before then,” Sylvia told her. “It only takes about a month to realize that HRT isn’t for you. You’d either feel completely awful on it or have the best feeling ever and wonder how you lived so long without it, even if you barely changed at all at that point. I remember that’s what I was thinking.”
She knew what that feeling was like. The relief. She knew just how unbelievable it was, how unbelievable it would be to have on this side too. Still, it was too risky, and wasn’t something she could ever do. It was much safer to just be satisfied with what she had, even if it wasn’t much.
“I… I’m still unsure,” Katrina told her. “I’m not sure I can do it. It’s just… too much. I’m not strong enough to be able to make that decision, and probably never will be.”
It was completely pathetic. She knew exactly what was wrong with her but was too afraid to fix it. Even worse, she knew exactly how nice it was to be comfortable in her own skin and still refused to do anything. Anyone else would look at her situation and laugh, or maybe be angry with her for how nervous and afraid she felt.
“It’s okay to be unsure,” she read in response. “I’m not trying to pressure you. It’s okay to not transition. If you find something that works for you, go for it.”