I am going there tonight.

The man who punches my ticket on the train knows it. The librarian, she knows it too. Even the man roasting hot dogs on the sidewalk of the New Haven Green gives me a look as if to say he knows it too.

I am going there tonight.

I stop at the red light, fingers drumming the steering wheel. A man in a silver Acura beside me. My eyes must tell him because I swear he mouths it to me, “Honey, honey, honey. You are going there tonight.” As if it were a tune. A melody.

“You have not been there in a while… It’s time, it’s time,” I say as I unroll the mat from its curled stature, letting it fall lifeless and flat onto the carpet before me. I stand on the edge of the mat and let the heat start to water my limbs, like a tin man begging for his oil. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

I am going there tonight.

The sign on the glass door of the two-story brick building tells me from the start, in big thick Helvetica lettering, that I cannot bring anything into the room with me beyond a towel, water bottle, and yoga mat.

Nothing else.

No cell phone to buzz in the billows of my pocket. The calls will have to wait. No laptop to light up the dark of the room as the lights turn down and we lie in dead man’s pose. The email will be there when the 90 minutes is over. It will pile over the hour and a half. I am so sure.

And here I am: Most vulnerable in 104 degrees. Becoming my own version of a Little Teapot. Tip me over. Pour me out. Steam rises up from the floor, knitting itself around me and somehow the thought of No outlets. No easy ways out. No escapes. Comforts me.

104 degrees, 90 minutes and 27 postures to go, and all I am holding is a posture. A cobra pose. And my breath.

A layer of sweat welds my tank top to my body. I am reminded once more of The Thing That Is Wise To Realize As We Grow: that sometimes there is nowhere else to go but inward. Some days you have no choice but to get down deep in the depths of your own messy feelings and sort stuff out. Sorry to say, they don’t have an app for this kind of thing just yet.

Inward. Arguably, the hardest place to visit but a place we’ve all been called towards at one point or another. Not an easy path, not a known set of stepping stones. Like grandmother’s house… when you don’t yet know of the Big Bad Wolf’s hiding spot along the pathway. And yet, you know its best to brave the dark forest because something warm lies down there in the lit up windows of a place that strips you bare and dares you to look at your true self, beyond Twitter profiles and Linked In connections.

You need to go off on your own, there is no other way for It Will Keep you Sane, to once in a while, pull your apt-to-tapping fingers away from the keyboard to acknowledge the Real, True Feelings that sit in your stomach, waiting to come out from hiding places behind a junk box of email, like another one of Glinda’s terrified Munchkins.

Suddenly Loneliness is diving down into triangle pose beside me, Regret stands on one foot in a superb tree position and I am asking tough questions that don’t get answered in 140 characters or just one spell of quiet time: Do I love this girl in the mirror? Is she happy? Is her heartbeat being accounted for?  What will happen to her when she is alone?

Alone, alone, alone. Will she shrivel and die? Curl and cry?

Or will she be o.k.? When the Loneliness bends down and the Insecurity rises up to the rafters? Will she be o.k.? When Fear shares the mat and she’s forced to exhale the Smallness for Something Bigger, Something Grander? Will she be Braver? Will she be Stronger?

Will she be o.k? Lord, will she be o.k?