“I just couldn’t see a way out. And and I thought that maybe that was the solution,” she said, explaining how she had asked lawyers working for then-independent counsel Ken Starr about what would happen if she died.
Now, she said, she thinks back on her experience and asks, “How was there not a protocol?” to deal with a situation like hers. “That’s a point where you’re supposed to bring a psychologist in or, you know, something,” she said.
Lewinsky told Axelrod that after Starr, who had also been probing other matters related to Clinton, began investigating the affair, she began seeing a forensic psychiatrist, a move that helped her get through the ordeal.
“I think a lot of people who have ever had suicidal ideations find themselves in a moment where it’s just — it’s a moment of grace, like, you know, two roads diverged in the woods,” she said. “And the forensic psychiatrist picked up the phone. And so I was, you know, pretty, pretty lucky.”
Lewinsky, who in recent years has spoken publicly about how her view of the affair changed during the #MeToo movement and how she struggled for years to fight her life being defined by the affair, told Axelrod that her work on the new series has helped her efforts to reclaim her story.
“My narrative was stolen and then I lost it by trying to recede, trying to run away from everything that had happened for many years,” she said, adding that part of “the work” she had to put in was accepting that she would have to face her past.
“This story is about real people and I’m involved in it, but it’s also about something bigger. It reflects something bigger in our society. And so as our society changes, there are different ways that this story feels relevant,” Lewinsky said.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/30/politics/monica-lewinsky-axe-files/index.html
