Sneezing Is More Disruptive Than It Should Be

There’s a small, oddly specific thing about my body that I’ve carried with me for years, and I don’t think I’ve ever really written about it. Sneezing. Or more precisely, sneezing too much, too easily, and always at the wrong time.

On a normal day, I can sneeze more than ten times. Not all at once, but in clusters. One trigger, then two or three sneezes in a row. Dust does it. Strong smells do it. Cold air almost always does. It feels like my nose reacts before I even have time to register what’s happening. By the time I realize, “oh, this might trigger something,” it’s already too late.

I know this sounds trivial. It probably is, medically speaking. But socially? Emotionally? Huh. That’s where it gets complicated.

What makes it worse is how public sneezing feels. Sneezing isn’t quiet. It interrupts things. It pulls attention. And when it happens in a quiet room—especially a classroom—it feels magnified. Back when I was still in school, there were moments when the class would go completely silent. The teacher would pause. Everyone would be focused. And right then, that familiar itch would appear in my nose.

I remember trying to fight it. Hard. Holding it in because I didn’t want to be that person who broke the silence. I didn’t want eyes turning toward me. I didn’t want that tiny ripple of disruption. So I’d tense up, clench my jaw, press my lips together. And yeah—my eyes would start watering. Not because I was emotional, but because my body was clearly unhappy with my decision.

It felt ridiculous, honestly. Sitting there, eyes watery, pretending everything was fine, just because I didn’t want to sneeze.

And then there’s the sunlight thing. This one still catches me off guard. Sometimes, when I step outside and look up into bright sunlight, I sneeze. Instantly. It looks almost comical, like my body doesn’t know how to process light properly. I’ve learned that this is actually a known reflex, and that a lot of people have it. Still, knowing that doesn’t stop it from feeling awkward when it happens in public.

All of this makes me think that my body is... well, overly alert. Like it’s constantly scanning for threats that aren’t really threats. Dust becomes a problem. Smells become alarms. Cold air feels invasive. Even light can be too much. It’s not painful, not dangerous, just tiring in a low-level, background way.

What bothers me isn’t the sneezing itself. It’s the way it makes me feel slightly out of sync with the environment. Like I have to manage myself more carefully than others. Like I need to anticipate reactions that most people don’t even think about. That constant small calculation—“Will this trigger something? Is this a bad moment? Should I hold it in?”—adds up.

I know, rationally, that sneezing is normal. Everyone does it. But repeated sneezing still carries this weird social weight. It feels disruptive. Excessive. A little embarrassing. And yeah, I think I internalized that early on.

Writing this now, it looks less like a medical issue and more like a quiet lesson in how we learn to negotiate our bodies in public spaces. How we suppress things that are harmless, just to avoid attention. How we choose discomfort over visibility.

I don’t have a neat conclusion here. No moral. No takeaway. I just see it more clearly now. My body is sensitive. It reacts fast. Sometimes too fast. And for years, I treated that as something to hide rather than something to accommodate.

Maybe this is just me acknowledging it. Not fixing it. Not dramatizing it. Just saying: yeah, this is part of how I move through the world. Slightly sneezy. Slightly awkward. Still human.