Recard in The U.S of Eh

By Rickard Svensson

Recard in The U.S of Eh is a story about struggling with severe mental illness, at the same time as you're away in a foreign country half way round the world, and forced to labour. When you're not part of the system although you need help. It's a story about fantastic solidarity in tough times. It's about politics/activism from rock bottom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rickard Svensson
• Release date: Oct 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005662837

Rickard Svensson

Rickard Svensson resides in Karlshamn, Sweden.He’s an author, poet and punkrocker, who loves football and music. He’s nowadays retired, a mental mental health advocate and used to work as a bike-messenger in Ottawa, Canada. He’s been involved in the union movement. He also has a dog, a black labrador.

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Contents

Disclaimer

How it All Began (a preclude to my story)

Chapter 1: The Arrival

Chapter 2: Terrorist?

Chapter 3: Nicole and Quick Messenger Service

Chapter 4: Rich vs. Poor

Chapter 5: Scared to death

Chapter 6: You’ve Got Mail!

Chapter 7: Get a Job!

Chapter 8: You’re From Sweden!

Chapter 9: Bike Thieves

Chapter 10: Working for Survival, Like Grandpa at Auschwitz

Chapter 11: First of May, Every Day!

Chapter 12: Montreal

Chapter 13: Locked Out From My Life

Chapter 14: The Return

An Epilogue In Progress

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to the wonderful people of Canada, my union (IWW), my dog who slept for the most part while i was writing, my family/both of my cousins who helped me with editing.

Disclaimer

The anecdotes and opinions expressed in this story are those of my own, and I can fully attest to their accuracy and truthfulness. The names of individuals mentioned here—notwithstanding those of famous punk bands—have been changed to protect their identities from undue humiliation and hardship.

I nonetheless stand by the veracity of everything detailed in this work of non-fiction.

How it All Began (a preclude to my story)

It was 2007. I'd just finished high school and had applied for university studies in the capital of  Sweden—Stockholm—and I'd gotten in. I was going to study International Relations with a class entitled Poland Today and Yesterday, as I have Polish roots.

Unfortunately, I had learned the hard way that Stockholm is one of the cities in the world with the worst housing market and I couldn't find a place to live, so I had to cancel my plans for university.

It’s here that I would like to point out that I was not mentally functioning at all; I knew something was wrong. At the university campus I found a note from a psychology student wanting patients to pratice on, and I took her number and planned to go see her as soon as I'd started studying at the university. I'd researched mental illness myself to figure out what was wrong, and I had unofficially diagnosed myself with Asperger Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), as I had friends who had these conditions, and related to them in that way. It seemed to make sense at the time.

Unfortunately, I never could study at university due to not being able to find a place to live. Then, drunk out of my mind at 4:00am in the winter of 2007, I was sitting in my hometown of Karlshamn, and reading an article on my favourite punk-news site (punknews.org) about Jeffrey Monaghan. He was a drummer in the band Suicide Pilots, from Ottawa, Canada.

He had been been arrested by the country’s national police force (the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP) for having leaked documents about how Canada hadn't met their environmental goals. The authorities also put a lot of emphasis on the fact that he was in a punk band, and that they had put out a satirical record cover depicting an anthropomorphic airplane crashing into the Canadian Parliament.

They also had a song equating the Canadian Prime Minister (Stephen Harper), and his followers, to Hitler (Harper Youth), and if that weren’t enough, the same man was part of a recently-started anarchist collective called Exile Infoshop. This made the right-wing press in Canada see red. These events culminated in the Suicide Pilots drummer holding a press-conference on Canadian television under the title (Country) Traitor.

I was also talking to my cousin on MSN Messenger that same night, and he told me that I