My Last Innocent Year

by Daisy Alpert Florin

I wasn’t a debater by nature and somewhere along the way had come to believe that what I felt, if it couldn’t be articulated or defended, was invalid.

We identified with her, which should have made us kinder but instead made us mean.

“I feel bad for her,” Bo said, and we all turned to look at him. “Everyone’s lying except for her, but she’s the one whose life will be ruined.”

This was said about Monica Lewinsky

I would soon come to understand that adulthood was exactly this: the constant upending of everything you believed when you were young.

“Well,” he said, “here’s what I do when I think I’ve made a mistake. First, I ask myself if it’s something I can fix. And if it’s not, I ask if it’s something I can live with.” “And what if it isn’t something you can live with?” “Then I go back and ask myself the first question again.”