I was losing balls constantly: in water hazards, in deep rough, in clusters of trees where errant shots rattle around as if on a Plinko board. So I started using high-­visibility golf balls as a matter of practicality. In golf, these are all but taboo. No one disputes that the little neon orbs, which typically come in luminescent shades of yellow, orange, red and pink, are easier to follow in the air than conventional white balls, or that they’re easier to find. It’s just that when players square up behind a ball that’s visible from an airplane, they might as well be pulling out a bullhorn and announcing to the entire course that they suck at golf, or that they’re very old, or both.

Manufacturers are well aware of their products’ lowly reputation, but every time a company tries to resuscitate their esteem, it only manages to make high-­visibility golf balls even more garish. Callaway recently introduced the Truvis, which comes in white overlaid with a red pentagonal soccer-­ball pattern (it also comes in eye-­gouging black-­on-­yellow). While I appreciate its counter­aesthetic charms, the Truvis has so much going on that it’s impossible for me to line up a putt with one. I prefer the offerings from Volvik and Bridgestone, whose soft matte covers don’t reflect light but instead seem to produce it from within, as if they contained bits of radioactive waste. A few rounds ago I somehow managed to impart backspin on a yellow Bridgestone e6 Soft with a fairway wood, so there’s no telling what’s in those things.

At first, I played about as well as I felt. Every dinky yellow ball I hit seemed to mysteriously veer left at the apex of its trajectory, so I widened my stance. It turned out that I’d overcorrected, and my hook became a slice. When I was losing balls, it was all too easy to simply drop another one and take a mulligan. But with the clarity the high-­visibility balls provided, I felt compelled to deal with my wayward shots, to seek them out and to understand what I’d done to send them there. As I tinkered with my swing, I focused on which tweaks produced, if not better results, at least different ones. I was comforted by the knowledge that at last I was working toward a balance.

For weeks, this cycle of error and compensation became the norm, but at least, for the first time since my depression began, I was doing something. Rather than isolating myself from life and its complications, I’d submitted myself to them; I was once again an agent in a cycle of cause and effect. It was a glorious proc­ess of experimentation, one in which the results mattered less than the realization that the will my depression had robbed me of was slowly returning.

Lots of people suck at golf, of course — most do, really. It’s just that many prefer to confront their ineptitude aspirationally, shelling out hundreds of dollars for all sorts of space-­age clubs that promise longer drives, straighter shots and miraculously generated backspin. It’s amusing that the only guaranteed game enhancer, whose utility is explained in its very name, is one that far too often languishes in the pro shop, overlooked and unloved. Best of all, high-­visibility golf balls help you do the work of self-­betterment all by your lonesome, allowing you to identify your problems so that you can fix them yourself. At this point, my game has improved to the point that my blinding yellow Bridgestones have begun to feel like training wheels. But there’s a part of me that isn’t quite ready to let them go. They gave me a little bit of light when things were at their darkest.