Allergies

It’s that time of year where it is almost summer. People are getting excited about the summer clothes that they can finally make use of, festivals and drinking Pimms. I love London especially in the summer. On a sunny day you’re never far from some green space where you can relax and enjoy the British weather for a change and it’s not far for a nice day trip to the coast if you want to get away from the city. It’s a time when people are looking their best and feeling great. Unless, you have allergies.

At a time when everyone is instagramming their ciders in the sun, I am not looking so good, and neither is poor Ren here.

I am someone who has allergies all year round and so my only reprieve is that in summer I am not alone in my sneezing and eye discomfort. For me, although it’s a time when my sneezing is at its worst and my eyes are in the most pain, it is kind of nice to see that some people react worse than me to pollen. Part of this cynical response to my fellow sneezers is that almost as annoying as the allergies themselves, is people’s confusion at them. I don’t have any major reactions but all year round I generally sneeze a lot which is quite annoying and sometimes leaves me feeling drained and as if I have a cold. I have had this for years, and people have known me all the way through my allergy years and yet still they back away in disgust thinking I have a cold. I understand that sneezing is normally a good indication that someone has a cold but in my case it is rarely an indication that I am ill. People often then follow their confusion that I don’t have a cold and yet I am sneezing with the obvious observation that it is winter at the time: “but it’s winter, it’s not hay fever season”. I didn’t realise that this was something that people didn’t know but from the amount of times I have been told that I am sneezing at the wrong time of year, it seems that people must be unaware that there are allergens that exist other than pollen.

As if it isn’t enough to deal with daily allergies, I have genuinely experienced people’s annoyance at my sneezing. People still archaically feel obliged to say ‘bless you’, and sometimes I do too if I am feeling particularly kind but I never expect to be ‘blessed’ precisely because I sneeze so much and I am not ill. There is no need for divine intervention to help me through the illness. But if you do say ‘bless you’ there is no point saying it if by the end you are shouting “BLESS YOU” as if I am continuing to sneeze because I didn’t hear you the first time. Similarly, it doesn’t help to say it in a way that appears an effort; after all I am the one having to go through convulsions of 100 mph through my nose, 14 times over (that’s my record), not you. And I tell you now, it is quite exhausting.