Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky smiles during a photo opportunity in Helsinki on Friday, April 9, 1999. AP Photo/Soile Kallio) Monica Lewinsky is stepping out of the shadows, writing for the first time about her mid-1990s affair with former President Bill Clinton in this month's edition of Vanity Fair.

Lewinsky has kept a low profile over the last decade-plus, but she says it's "time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress."

In a preview of the article, which Vanity Fair posted on its website, Lewinsky says she "deeply regrets" her affair with Clinton.

"Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened," she wrote.

Lewinsky says she is going public in part because of the tragic story of 18-year-old Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, who killed himself in 2010 after his roommate filmed him, without his knowledge, kissing another man. Lewinsky says the incident took her back to the days of her own scandal, when her mother worried she would try to commit suicide. Lewinsky says now she believes it is important to tell her own story.

"Thanks to the Drudge Report," she wrote of the website that broke the story of the affair, "I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet."

Lewinsky's step into the spotlight comes at a time when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bill's wife, is considering a run for president in 2016. Some top potential Republican candidates have already played the Lewinsky card. Earlier this year, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said voters should think twice about Bill Clinton's return to the White House — even as a spouse — because of what he called "predatory behavior."

In her piece on Vanity Fair, Lewinsky addressed the release of documents from the Clinton library that revealed Hillary Clinton called her a "narcissistic loony toon" in correspondence with close friend Diane Blair.

“My first thought,” Lewinsky wrote, “as I was getting up to speed: If that’s the worst thing she said, I should be so lucky. Mrs. Clinton, I read, had supposedly confided to Blair that, in part, she blamed herself for her husband’s affair (by being emotionally neglectful) and seemed to forgive him. Although she regarded Bill as having engaged in ‘gross inappropriate behavior,’ the affair was, nonetheless, ‘consensual (was not a power relationship).’”

You can read a preview of Lewinsky's story here.