I Am Worth More Than Nude Snapchats

“Now don’t be afraid to be creative with your snapchats,” he says with a slightly leering grin. You laugh awkwardly, because it is supposed to be a joke, even if you both know he’s not really kidding. You try to reassure yourself that he really is the nice guy he seemed to be at the bar, but your suspicions otherwise are unfortunately confirmed as he moves his arm just paces after you’ve tried to tuck your hand into the crook of his elbow as you and he walk to the bus stop.

Somewhere between his comment that you have both beauty and brains and your refusal to actually sleep with him because you didn’t want a one-night stand, you became the girl he adds on Snapchat instead of to his phone contacts or on Facebook. You’re not quite sure how it happened or what you did- after all, his friend had spent the evening at the bar referring to you as the “sophisticated” one. But you realize all at once that all you are to him is a source of pleasure, whatever he can get from your “creative” snapchats, and that there’s not going to be a whole lot of reciprocation.

This is what he’s reduced you to, and suddenly the fact that you like to dance down the aisles in grocery stores and speak multiple languages and learned to scuba dive to fulfill your childhood dream of being a mermaid and everything else that’s interesting about you doesn’t seem important. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all. And that’s pretty much guaranteed to make you feel like whatever it was you just scraped off your shoe before walking into your apartment and getting into bed, trying to curl up and curl in on yourself until you’re not anyone anymore.

Don’t let it ruin you. Don’t let someone’s decision to view you a certain way make you forget everything you are. It might take a little while. Maybe you’ll be talking to your friends about plans for the weekend and remember that they love you in all of your imperfect, sassy, overexcited beauty. Maybe you’ll help a stranger find their way, remembering what it felt like to be lost in a now familiar place, and in the process learn about their fascinating life in an obscure country. Or maybe it’ll be as simple as meeting a duo at the airport who are merrily tipsy to help their flight nervousness and remembering how good it feels to laugh.

In the end, you’ll remind yourself, “I am worth more than nude snapchats,” and you’ll believe it, and eventually you’ll believe it enough to delete him from Snapchat for good. Because as glorious as your body is, it is not everything that you are, and you deserve better than to be tied to someone who makes you feel like the rest doesn’t matter.