“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
Kristina's mother, Michelle Calso is now serving as
the Co-Director of Bully Police-Michigan,
www.bullypolice.org
(Bully Police USA), a watch-dog group that advocates for children who are
bullied and works with lawmakers to get anti bullying laws enacted.
Bullying 
depression
