People ask me all the time: "Anya, why did you stop playing golf? It seems like a dream job."
Then I give the usual, succinct answer: "Golf just wasn't for me, and besides, I wanted to write for a living."
I found that by giving a brief answer that distracted from the topic of golf, I never had to tell the real reason I stopped playing.
The truth is I could barely handle the reason myself.
Golf, for me, was a torrid love affair. The moments of giving my entire heart into the sport, only to not feel it reciprocated, left me in a downward spiral of emotions. I never knew how to enjoy my success or, better yet, how to handle my failures.
With golf, my desire to be perfect was amplified. When I turned professional, it felt like I had more eyes on me, which only meant more people would witness any mistake I made.
This was crippling.
As a journalist, I have written extensively about sexual assault and my personal experiences with it. What I have never addressed is my own depression, which resulted from the abuse.
Although I wanted golf to provide solace, I found my depression worsen with every setback I had on the golf course. Then, in 2013, I was hospitalized for threatening to kill myself while at a tournament.
As I sat in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital, the EMTs asked me question after question, trying to determine how serious my threat was. After I was checked in to the hospital, a nurse escorted me to a stark, white room that had a couple of tabloid magazines and a small television.
I was checked in right before midnight. My tee time was later that morning at 8:45.
My anxiety began to heighten when I realized that they would not let me leave and I would miss competing. I wandered the psych ward, and I heard the screams of people in other rooms.
I asked a nurse when a psychiatrist would meet with me; she told me to remain patient.
Frustrated, I went back to my room and read every article in those tabloid magazines. I turned on the TV and tried to zone out. But I couldn't take it. I had to compete the next day because not competing meant failure on my part. Even more devastating, not competing due to my being mentally ill meant I was weak.
I convinced a nurse to get me in with a psychiatrist, and then I convinced the psychiatrist that I had never made suicidal threats before (that was a lie) and that I was fine (also a lie) and that my suicidal threat was to upset my boyfriend at the time, whom I was fighting with (also a lie.)
I explained that missing the golf tournament would be detrimental to my career and would probably make me depressed. With these points at hand, I was released, I took a taxi back to the hotel, and I woke up two hours later to play.
During my fight with depression, writing was the one thing that made me feel sane. Golf only gave a reflection to the pain I did not know how to manage and the very things about myself that I loathed.
Although my time playing professionally was just under four years, I had played Division I golf at the University of Washington and in national tournaments as a teenager and junior.
When I left golf to take care of my mental health and pursue writing, the similarities between a freelance writer and a golfer quickly became obvious.
There are times when I doubt my ability as a writer, just like I doubted my ability as a golfer. When this doubt creeps in, it affects the quality of my work, as it did with the quality of my game.
With writing, I have to realize that a story might not go as planned: the narrative often changes without so much as a warning. Golf is the same. There were many times when I had a plan of how I'd play the course, only to be deterred by unforeseen obstacles.
Not long after I began pursuing writing full-time, I started to receive offers to cover women's golf and tell the stories of the women I used to play with on tour. Through writing about women's golf, I've been able to maintain a connection to a world that I initially wanted to stamp out of my memory.
It has been almost three years since I stopped playing. There are moments when I wish I could be out there, when I wish I could have fought harder.
Writing this now, I understand more fully just how important it was for me to leave golf when I did. I also feel hopeful because having the ability to talk honestly and openly about my depression reaffirms that I made the right choice when I stopped playing.
I gained back a part of myself when I realized that my mental health is much more important than any shot I could ever hit.
If you need someone to talk to, call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.