“Hi, I’m Kristina
Calco and I’m 12 ½ yrs old going on 13 on Dec. 26 (the day after
Christmas aren’t I lucky?) You are reading about my life in my preteen/teenage
years. Let me tell you a few things about me.
I have wavy/curly dark brown
hair an inch or two longer than my shoulders and dark… and brown eyes.
I wear glasses and am a little pale, not so much anymore because I got
tan over the summer. I’m 4 ft 10 ½ (I know I’m short for my age,
20th percentile, but I’m growing.) I’m in 7th grade this year and am dying
to be 13 (then I’ll finally be a teenager!). I have to get braces really
soon right now I’m wearing a twin block to move my jaw forward. I had an
overbite but it’s almost gone because my treatment for that will be over
soon. Although braces are no walk in the sun, they’ve got to be better
than this! I’m not popular but I’m not a loser and I’m actually pretty
shy around other kids, unless I know them well.”
|
In middle school, Kristina was a 4.0 honor student who
always strived for perfection in everything that she did. She was extremely
artistic and her work was chosen, not only to be on the cover of the school
yearbook but she was also selected to design the school t-shirts.
In an effort to overcome her shyness, she joined the student broadcasting
staff, the yearbook staff and the newspaper staff. And although she
was admittedly not the best at sports, she joined the Swimming team, the
Volleyball team, the Track team and even joined the Ski Club. She signed
up for Forensics and earned a 3rd place trophy in the 2003 State Forensics
Tournament.
She later wrote that no one would ever know how hard that
was for her. That was actually one of the proudest moments of her life. |
>
|
|
 >
|
Kristina supported her school in every way imaginable
and attended numerous sporting events, such as basketball and football.
At the end of the 8th grade, Kristina tried out for and made the JV Cheerleading
team for High School. She wrote in her journal:
“Me, Kristina Arielle Calco,
I made the cheerleading squad for high school! JV too! I’m so proud of
myself!”
Despite all of her accomplishments however, there were
some who would choose to drag Kristina down. |
> |
Our first indication of what had happened was found in
Kristina’s suicide note, which was written in the form of a poem. She wrote:
"I knew I was always the ugly
one. Don't say that's a lie because you don't know what some kids have
said and done. It hurts to think about how mean some people could be. Even
when I started to look a little better, they still couldn't see.”
When we found that note, we were absolutely dumbfounded.
Not only could we not make heads or tails of it, but we had absolutely
no idea why she would write that. She had blossomed into a beautiful girl.
And so our search for answers began.
|
 >
|
Initially, we found 2 Instant Message Conversations in
which Kristina said to a friend:
“You should have heard what
they said to me in middle school. It was awful. I felt like crying.
Everyday this boy would tell
me I was ugly and nasty, and then he got other people to say it too. It
was torture and a living hell.”
In another IM conversation, she tells another person:
“Everyone I've ever liked
has always rejected me for reasons of ‘God, you are so ugly’ or ‘I’d never
go out with you’.” |
When the other party questioned her about whether these
words were actually spoken to her and what she did about it, Kristina replied
"yes,
they actually said those words to me and I cried a lot."
By this point, we began to question her group of friends,
which included both her Middle school friends as well her High School friends.
Yes, it was all true. We were told that Kristina was teased and tormented
and ridiculed throughout her middle school years and up to at least the
9th grade. Neither she nor any of her friends ever told a single adult
about what was going on. We were told that there was a particular group
of boys that did this to her and that every day the girls would have to
console Kristina in the cafeteria. Her friends would reassure Kristina
that she was not ugly and that she was beautiful. They thought they were
doing the right thing. Unfortunately, the bullying never ended. Kristina,
who was such a frail and sensitive girl, was made to feel ugly on a daily
basis by a group of her own peers. By the time she was in the 9th grade,
she had internalized the verbal assaults until she believed them with every
grain of her soul.
To her friends and her classmates, Kristina, to quote
a fellow classmate “was one of those rare gems that was as gorgeous on
the inside as she was on the outside. She was incredibly multitalented,
intelligent, and articulate, and she had a certain grace and class to her
that many others her age lacked greatly. There was something about
her that just made the entire room light up. She exuded radiance and had
a sparkling personality that led others to feel better without warning.”
She cared about everyone, to the detriment of even herself.
She was kind and considerate and caring and always made people feel so
good about themselves. Kristina worried about her friends, her bullies
and the world around her. She wrote about her deep desire to help humanity
in some way and that it was her hope to become a great scientist and find
a cure for Cancer and for Aids.
This is the Eulogy that I wrote and read at Kristina’s
visitation:
My daughter was a very sensitive young girl of 15 who
sadly was just never meant to make it to her 16th birthday, which would
have been 12/26/2005. To us and everyone else, this Saturday, (December
3rd, 2005) seemed not much different from any other Saturday. Kristina
slept in, ate breakfast, showered and dressed. She asked to go to the library
to get books for a project she was working on about John F. Kennedy. I
dropped her off at the library while I drove to pick up my other daughter
from dance class. After that I drove Kristina to the mall to do some shopping.
She helped her friend get ready for the dance and decided that she’d like
to go after all. When she came home she went directly upstairs to fix her
hair. When she was done with her hair and makeup, we drove to get a dress
at Marshall Fields. She chose the dress she wanted, we paid and we just
cut the tags so she could wear it out. We drove home to get the $10 entrance
fee and my husband. Kristina asked me how she looked, to which I replied
that she looked great, which of course wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
She had wanted me to tell her that she looked beautiful, which of course
she did. Kristina told us the dance was over at 11 pm, so my husband arrived
shortly after that to pick her up. He called her cell at which time she
told him she’d made an error and that it was really over at 11:30. She
came out sometime around 11:40 PM, came home, showed the other kids her
dress, and proceeded to get on IM. I must have told her 6 times to take
off her dress and get ready for bed. She asked me to take her picture first,
which didn’t seem an unusual request as she did this for every dance she
had. I took her picture and then went up to bed.
That’s the last time I saw Kristina alive.
Kristina never saw the gorgeous, bright, brilliant, intelligent,
special person that she was. She couldn’t stand looking into mirrors because
all she ever saw looking back at herself was “ugliness
and fat”. “So I don’t look”.
|
“I just pretend I look really
good, sometimes it’s really hard though because I don’t like being, thinking...
that I’m pretty when I’m not." |
|
For whatever reason, in the wee morning hours of Sunday
December 4th, Kristina lost her focus. The stage had been set and with
such a frail and sensitive soul, she just couldn’t bear the pain that had
consumed her. In that one tiny infinitesimal instant, Kristina made the
choice to kill herself. Suicide seemed her only escape… her only way out…
her only way to end the pain.
You see, in Kristina’s mind, life was like a test, where
there was supposed to be a perfect outcome. She was always looking for
a certain set of steps to follow a clear, precise beginning, middle and
end, and life just doesn’t conform to those rules, despite all the wishful
thinking in the world. For Kristina, it was like trying to solve a math
equation for which she’d been given the wrong formula from the start. No
matter what she did, she just couldn’t get the correct answer.
In closing I want you all to know that Kristina could
never have understood the finality of what she did. She wrote about it
so often as if she could have done it any day or time, just as you or I
would take a breath. I know that in her mind that she imagined it would
be like simply walking away down a long road and just not coming back.
In my heart, I know that she couldn’t possibly have fully realized how
one person’s life could touch so many, many other people’s lives. ; She
didn’t understand that once you are gone, you can never, never ever come
back.
Kristina wrote in a 7th grade journal entry:
“The only reason I even bother
to tell my sad sob story is that someday the public might know what a teenage
girl goes through. So as you know nice guys finish last... well it might
as well be nice girls finish last, too”.
Tragic as our story is to tell and live each day.
I feel that there are things to be learned from Kristina’s story.
Written in the hopes that no one else might ever have to awaken to such
a blustery snowy morning as we did.
Michelle Calco
To read Kristina’s complete Life Story, please visit her
memorial web page at http://www.theshabbycastle.com/kristinacalco
Bullying 
depression
Jared's
Sister says:
