Monica Lewinsky suffered 'trauma' following the Clinton sex scandal

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Monica Lewinsky lost her “purpose” following the Bill Clinton sex scandal.

The 49-year-old TV personality was involved in a sexual relationship with the former U.S. President between 1995 and 1997, and she admits that her mood became “very, very dark” as she realized the scandal was engulfing her life.

Lewinsky – who worked as an intern in the White House – shared: “It’s been a challenge. The last several years, since 2014, it started to evolve and mould and change.

“Prior to that, I came into a different, more difficult period than 1998 after everything subsided and this trauma that lasted for a year, I then found myself in this new landscape, trying to understand how I move forward? How did I get back on a developmental path as a young woman?”

Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998. And although he was subsequently acquitted on all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, the scandal caused long-term damage to Lewinsky’s reputation.

During an appearance on Dua Lipa’s At Your Service podcast, Lewinsky – who was just 22 years old when she started her sexual relationship with the president – explained: “It was really through that next decade, after so many different attempts and then going to graduate school and not being able to find a job, that I really started to realize the damage that had been done in a whole different way than what I had experienced in ’98.

“I’ve been living in L.A. now for a little bit. Last year I drove down a portion of highway I hadn’t been on for a long time. I remembered I used to drive that road to Pasadena to purchase something at Target, drive home and the next day drive there and return it because it took up time during the day. I had no purpose.

“It was a very, very dark time and quiet dark in a different way where ’98 was chaos and a shambolic morass of blaring headlines, jokes and all those other things. This was a quiet despair.”