No One Wants To Sleep With Darth Vader

"That mask. That heavy breathing. I can barely contain myself when he's around. He's so sexy."

Said no one ever.

Look, Vader has a lot going for him that some girls might like. That whole bad-boy-kills-people-with-his-mind thing can be very attractive to a certain kind of woman. But one thing I think almost everyone would agree on, though I can't say for sure, is that the mask ain't where it's at.

Which is why I held off on getting a CPAP for years, even though I knew I needed one.

At the time, I had huge concerns that my "bed partner" (as the medical professionals call them) would find the whole thing so off-putting that he'd be done with me in a matter of weeks. I finally talked to him about it and he said that he'd rather I be able to breathe than die in my sleep. So I jumped through all the testing and insurance hoops. I slept at home with a bunch of sensors taped to me. I slept in a sterile medical room with so many wires glued to my head that I didn't get all the adhesive out in the shower the next morning -- even though I washed my hair THREE TIMES. I spent a week of near-sleepless nights forcing myself to get used to the thing because I didn't want to die in my sleep. 

He dumped me about a month later. 

Apparently the mask had nothing to do with it. (Consensus is that he's pretty much a big goober. Or assface, depending on which term you like best.) But it really felt like he saw me in that thing twice and did not pass go, did not collect $200. He was just OUT. To his credit, all he ever said about it was that I was more chipper when I woke up, and that he hated that he couldn't tell if I was asleep or not because I was quiet. (I always thought that last comment was weird.) But I digress.

Now, nearly two springs later, I find myself contemplating how incredibly unsexy CPAP usage is. First of all, I can never ever use any kind of nighttime eye wrinkle cream, because my mask shoves all the skin on my face up and back at weird angles. I can't fight aging unless I want to gunk up the mask and shove crap into my eyes. So, there's that.

Mask manufacturers tell you that the mask should "float" on the skin, but that's BS. If you want to wake up every five minutes because your mask moves and cold air bursts into your face in a rush, that's fine. But I wear mine pretty tight, which means I wake up with big mask lines in a triangle around my mouth and nose, and then from the triangle up to each ear. It's freaking adorable. When I look in the mirror in the morning, I can't get enough of myself.

Finally, the damn thing has started to make pressure sores right on the high points of my cheekbones. I've tried using bandaids to keep them from happening, but then I break out from the bandaids. My dad, who once said I looked like the Michelin Woman (so is not the King of Tact) looked at me last spring and said, "Wow. Your face is so broken out! Is that from your mask?"

Thanks dad. You gave me this sleep apnea, so I appreciate your sympathy. And the fact that you never went for sleep testing and used a friend's mask until it started leaking, so now you just snore and stop breathing again -- but hey! Clear skin!

I thought of all this last night as I watched a recent episode of "Life in Pieces," where one of the couples was about to have some sexy time while the dude was hooked up to his CPAP. They were interrupted by a phone call, though, telling them that their daughter wanted to come home from a sleepover, so the dude got out of bed, forgot he had the mask on and totally jerked himself backward onto the floor when his tubing hit its limit. It was pretty laugh-out-loud hilarious. But it did get me thinking that maybe there's hope for us CPAP users after all. Maybe I'm not destined to sleep alone with my adorable pink mask for the rest of my life.

As a doctor friend told me she tells her patients, "Nerdy sex is in now. With a CPAP, you can pretend you're sleeping with Darth Vader." 

I can't kill people with my thoughts, but I certainly have the mechanical heavy breathing down.