"What am I living for" - Kostyuk details life on Tour as war rages back home

Right now Ukrainian tennis star Marta Kostyuk is finding it tough to focus on the sport she has dedicated her life to.

Ukrainian tennis player Marta Kostyuke is one of many Ukrainians playing tennis right now and she's finding it very hard to focus on the sport that she loves. Asked about the war back home in Ukraine, Kostyuk was very forward saying:

"Right now is something indescribable, I would say, because there is a parent of one tennis player that died. There is one tennis player's house that is completely destroyed. It was extremely difficult, the first week or two. It's been two months and you know, it's up and down, it changes. I'm trying to guide myself a little bit, just trying to see where I'm at. Trying to feel myself and trying to figure myself out."

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In the talk with CNN, Kostyuk also detailed how she started working with a psychologist to manage her emotions better:

"I started a couple of weeks ago, which helps me enormously. But you know, sometimes it goes to a certain extent that it's scary, the thoughts that come to you. I don't want to say the words because you know, you can figure out what I'm trying to speak about. Because at that point, there's so many things going on, you need to carry so much all at once that you are just like, I can't handle this anymore. I'm just like, what's the point where it's all going? It's never ending like what should I do with my life now? What am I living for?."

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Kostyuk was also asked about the growing calls to keep sport out of politics and politics out of sport which she finds laughable:

"I don't understand, what's the point of dividing these two things? It's one big system that we're circling in. One cannot live without the other, and vice versa. So for me [the idea that] 'sport is out of politics.' Honestly, for so many years, it's been proven completely the opposite. We're trying to talk about the fact that none of the players have actually come up and spoken to us to try to help somehow."

She continued:

"We used to be friends with a lot of players. I'm not friends with anyone anymore, like one single player. We know the whole world is trying to support us [Ukraine]. Everyone knows that what's going on is wrong. And yet inside the tour, we're alone."