place people describe as “really safe.” At first, it was nice to
be home. She went to the gym
with her mother. She enjoyed
healthy fare at family dinners.
As weeks turned into months,
however, she began sinking into
depression. This was no summer visit. This was her life.
She was sleeping in a
cramped twin bed in the same
room in which she had grown
up, the walls painted dark red —
a color she had chosen in middle
school. “It’s like a little cave,”
she says. She went to Target and
bought a clothes rack, because
her closet was stuffed full of the
past — her prom dress, her high
school volleyball uniforms, a giant teddy bear.
Her parents had always
known her as someone with
drive, but now they began asking her what she was doing to
look for work. She chafed at
their concern, even as she understood it; even as she felt bad
about feeling irritated.
“They are really great parents
and they have done so much,
sacrificed so much of their time
so I can have the best in life,
and you don’t want to disappoint them,” she says. “I just
felt really helpless.”
As her job search continued
to yield rejection, she figured
she had to do something — anything. A high school friend told
her about a hostess job at the
Lebanese restaurant where she
worked, and Griffin took it. She
greets people, wipes down tables, sets down silverware. One
afternoon, the manager sent her
outside with chalk to draw an
enticing message on the sidewalk. As she bent down on the
pavement, she made eye contact
with a waiter who was outside
on a cigarette break.
“I look up and I’m like, ‘I
have a college degree, and I’m
here drawing on the sidewalk,’”
she says. The waiter laughed.
He, too, had a college degree.
She doesn’t blame Obama for
her predicament. “How can you
blame one person for not having
a job?” she says. “I don’t really
know how we could have gotten
out of this mess. It was all created by years of federal policy.”
But politics seems tainted. “I
guess I’m going to vote, because
I really don’t want the Republicans to get the White House,
but it’s more of an anti-vote,”
she says. “It seems like the
system is really broken. Most
people are just really sick of the
vitriol and negativity, and not
necessarily toward Obama, but
just the whole thing. It’s going
to be more difficult to get every-
ELECTION
2012
Obama &
Young Voters
HUFFINGTON
06.17.12