August 13, 2007, 9:34 AM
Tim Thorburn’s Autobiography
Intro: I’m a schizophrenic that has suffered for a number of years. This story was written with the intent of being it read by psychiatric professionals. This is my story.
History: I was born to Jon and Margery Thorburn the 16th of July 1980 at Sioux Valley Hospital in Sioux Falls, SD. I have one other sibling, an older sister, she is 4 years older than I. I grew up in Canton, SD and attended preschool and kindergarten there. My grandparents on my mother’s side, Carl and Helga Ofstad, and their son Bob Ofstad owned and operated Ofstad’s Oil Company in Canton for a great number of years before selling the gas station in 1995 and moving to Hot Springs, SD. I spent a lot of my youth spending time with them and having overnights with them at their house which was located no more than 10 feet from the station. I think it was those years spent with them that I truly had an understanding of what hard work and dedication is and also developed a fondness for automotive and mechanics in general.
My father works as an electrician at the Post Office fixing the machines that process the mail. My mother went to Augustana College to become an Art Teacher, she graduated but never finished her student teaching portion. This has always laid heavily on her mind. I don’t care whether she was a teacher or not, I’m proud of her for graduating and making a difference in the lives of so many children as well as adults. She cared for the young, the old, the mentally challenged as well as the physically challenged. I would help her all the time with the babysitting and later with the assisted living she had in her home. In assisted living she cared for a blind man named Roger and a mentally challenged man named Billy. I grew very close to them and still think of them as part of the family today. Being around people with disabilities gave me a great sense of caring for others and an understanding of how hard life can be for some people but also how much easier it can become with the right caregiver. My mother would later fall ill with CNS Lymphoma which is a form of Brain Cancer. It’s so sad that something like this could happen to such a great person so full of life and then for that life to be sucked from their soul. It’s also very ironic that she ended up in a nursing home needing the same care that she once had given to others such a short time ago.
We had two dogs Molly Nell, a German Shepard mix and Bella, a Golden Retriever. I always had a love for animals and would later in life have a multitude of pets while at the present only have a Persian cat named Peek-A-Boo, a turtle named Stephen, and a 40 gallon aquarium of fish. I only had maybe a handful of friends when I lived in Canton but the closest to me was Solomon Oroyle who’s mother was friends with my mother and who’s sister was friends with my sister. Solomon’s mother Linda was very religious and a lot of that rubbed off on my mom and ultimately on me as well. At the age of five I asked Jesus to come into my heart at Faith Family Outreach during a “Gospel Bill Show” presentation. I’ve always been very close to God and would often talk with him while I was alone with no one else around, I think at the present I’m closer to God than most people and are. My mother told me that when I was younger I told her I had seen an Angel and that it was as tall as a telephone pole. So needless to say I’m very religious.
I was 7 years old in 1987 when my parents got a divorce. It was my mother’s decision, my parents relationship was unhealthy for them both and my mom thought that my dad was a negative person and a bad influence on me, she had a wish that I would grow up to be positive like Norman Vincent Peale the author of the “The Power Of Positive Thinking”. I think that I have succeeded in that and I support my mother’s decision. My mother got full custody of my sister and I and we moved to Sioux Falls to a Townhouse on the East side. My sister and I had visitation with our dad every Saturday and went to his parents summer cottage on Tar Island for 2 weeks every year.
I was enrolled at Sioux Falls Lutheran School from 1st to 3rd grade before being moved to Bancroft Public School for the 4th grade. I hated it, and didn’t do well that year and was disillusioned by the way the kids acted in public school. The following year after pleading with my mother I was placed back in private school at Sioux Falls Lutheran and couldn’t have been happier, I was back with old friends and back in the study of religion and the Bible. I attended through the 8th grade. My 8th grade teacher, Mr. Merkord, was my teacher that year and really turned my life around as far as school was concerned. Prior to having him I had a long history of getting behind in school work and handing almost everything in late. I was the biggest procrastinator in my class. Having a good teacher made all the difference, he was like a mentor to me and there was just something in his eyes that was very vexing to me, it just made you want to change for the better and be like him. Thanks to him my study habits improved and I was prepared for High School.
Myself as well as many others thought it would be best for me to attend public school for high school because you just get so much more out of it. I went to Washington High School. It took a while to adjust but by Sophomore year, was well acclimated to the adjustment. I only made one good friend, Nick Eisenhower, whom I still am close to today. I excelled in Algebra, my most favorite study, was in JROTC, and was in long distance Track my Senior year. I had always been a runner and don’t know why I didn’t join the Track team before my Senior year but am very thankful I did, it was a great experience. I still run on occasions and enter Fun Runs from time to time. I graduated in 1999 with a class of some 400 students. I had no plans for the future at that point but hoped I would before the fall. 1999 was the best year of my life it truly was a milestone, I had just graduated, I had my whole life ahead of me. That Summer I went on a bike trek alone across the state of South Dakota. It was a grueling but enjoyable 3 ½ day trip that ended in Hot Springs where my Uncle lived at the time. I spent the month of June with him before going home. I also went to New York City as a side trip with my father that summer. Our summer cottage is on the St. Lawrence River on the Canadian side just North of New York so we didn’t have far to travel. We also visited Niagara Falls.
Before I knew it, it was August and I hadn’t even been enrolled in a college or university. I enrolled at SDSU in Brookings and thought I could stay with my Grandma Abby, my father’s mother. I had vague aspirations to become a pilot and tried getting in all the necessary classes that I needed but because I waited so long to get enrolled and reserve a seat for classes there were very few to take. I decided to do a general enrollment. When the “rat race” was all over and after having such a time, I later decided not to proceed with these plans and dropped the classes and took the year off and stayed with my mom and got a job until I could figure things out.
With flying recently being on my mind I instinctively thought of the Air Force. I talked to a recruiter at the Mall about it and soon got into the delayed enlistment program. I was not due to enlist until 03-01-2000 so I got a job at a car wash part-time as well as a part-time job with UPS as an unloader. I enjoyed working and did exceptional, I had very good work ethic despite only having 4 paper routes while I went school. I didn’t want a very demanding job while I went to school because it was hard for me to concentrate on my studies and juggle the two. I enlisted in March of 2000 as a Jet Engine Mechanic as my test scores were very high in the mechanics portion. It was to be a 6 year commitment with an $8,000 bonus plus a guaranteed rank of E-3 upon graduation from Tech School.
Basic Training was very hard for me. It was only 6 weeks but the mental breakdown that they try to induce on the trainees can be difficult and make the stay seem like forever. I had never been around so much yelling in all my life, I was never really yelled at growing up but rarely ever needed to be anyway as I was very well behaved. I kind of felt sorry for my mom and wanted to make her life a little easier as my sister was a total ‘basket case” growing up. The weeks continued with training, mental abuse, mental bashing, yelling and more yelling till finally I was through.
I took a bus from Lackland AFB to Shepard AFB where I learned the “ins and outs” of a TF33 jet engine. I was pleased to find that some of my fellow trainees from my flight in Basic Training were in my same class at Tech School. The term of my education was short, about 8wks, but when I graduated I felt comfortable around a jet engine, at least this particular model. In Basic Training I had requested my top 10 choices for what base I would eventually be stationed in. There were no guarantees you would even get one of your choices. Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City, SD was choice #1; Fairchild AFB in Spokane, WA was #5; I got the latter. I chose Fairchild because I knew a family, The Pedersen’s, whom I’d known from our summer cottage, as they have property next door to ours. The Pedersen’s resided in Portland, Oregon; about a 5 hour drive from the base. I grew very fond of them and went to visit whenever I had the chance. After graduation from Tech School I took 2 weeks leave and went home. The day after my birthday 07-17-2000 I arrived at Fairchild late that night. The morning would proceed with in-processing. Within weeks of arriving I received 2 stripes to signify the rank of A1C or E-3.
I had my own personal dorm room and only had to share the common areas with one other person. After in-processing I began on-the-training on KC-135 aircraft which utilized an F-108 jet engine. The engine was completely different from the one I was trained to work on in Tech School but the general mechanics of it were the same and I grew to find that because of the design and because it was a newer engine it was easier to work on and maintain. Besides performing maintenance on the jet engines I was also required to perform maintenance on the APUs (Auxiliary Power Units) which are the starting devices for the jet engines and are a small jet engine themselves. I missed my home life terribly and called home and took leave as often as I could. I didn’t have many friends in the dormitory even after the first 2 years of living there. I was very much a loner and my social life reflected that but I soon became friends with TSgt Ensor, the Dorm Manager. He was a really great guy and was kind of like a mentor to me and the first person in the military that I had met that had kind of the same mentality as I did. What I mean is that most people in the service are so engulfed in protocol and being the way that the military thinks is the way to be that they forget themselves. I was strong willed and wasn’t about to change for anyone and never did, I complied with the absolute bare minimum and no more. I was later told I had a personality disorder that didn‘t agree with military service. I am proud of that and think it speaks volumes about my personality. Not only was Ensor not just another “robot”, he was very much a Christian and following his retirement which was about 1 year after I got to know him he got a job as a pastor in Liberty Lake, WA. I was saddened to see him go but pleased to see him doing something more worthwhile and that he liked doing. I attended the church every Sunday and would visit Pastor Don at his home about once a week.
The training continued for me on the jet engines and at my 2 year mark was due for a promotion to E-4. It was at this point in my enlistment that I grew afraid of every passing day, the more I learned the more I was expected to know and do and with the promotion came even more responsibility. I began to fear progression. In the military you are constantly moving forward but I didn’t want to move forward until I felt ready and didn’t want to be pushed. It was out of my control, I had to move forward and did but not without the cost of my health. I grew more and more stressed about things and it affected my work. I had enough training that I was trusted to work alone on jet launches and one day there was a problem with a jet having excessive throttle vibration from the engines. I was sent up to talk with the pilots about the problem. I had never been more afraid and alone in all my life; suddenly I felt as though I would faint but didn’t. I had no idea what to tell them; some electrician specialists sensed that I needed help and came up to assist my recommendation. We concluded that it was within limits and wasn’t a concern for flight. It was after that that I started to question my competency. I was always a good troop and my supervisor was always impressed with my work ethic but I had a serious problem working alone and the more I thought about it the more the stress seemed to melt my mind and I started forgetting things that I was taught. I began making careless mistakes in the aircraft forms and losing tools or leaving them behind on aircrafts.
A year prior to the 2 year mark I was wanting to make drastic changes to my life. I started eating really healthy and working out 4 hours a day and running 6 miles a day. I got such a high out of it. I was in the best shape of my life. I thought of my diet and exercise as my primary focus and had almost completely forgotten that I was in the military; I just wanted to be this other person. I lost about 30 pounds and I think people at work started to worry about me because I lost so much weight so soon. I wanted to cleanse my soul. I didn’t want to eat anymore I only drank water and worked out and read the bible excessively at home and work. I had been a heavy smoker and drank from time to time but now everything stopped. The more I refrained from the earthly desires the less I wanted them. I read the book “ The Power Of Positive Thinking”. I started to pray for people I didn’t even know. And then I started thinking I was Jesus Christ or a very Christ Like individual or Prophet sent to earth to make right what I thought was wrong.
After these delusions of grandeur, paranoia set in and I started remembering “911” and listening to all the news reports about terrorists and plans for war. I was terrified to go to war. Not to fight for my country but just the idea of having to go some where unknown to me at the drop of the hat. I don’t handle change very well and being deployed would just mess with my world. I had been on a short deployment once to California for 2 weeks while the flight line was getting repaired and even that adjustment was difficult for me. My name was on a list to deploy sometime in the near future and having that on my mind and knowing that it was completely out my hands made me sick. The more I watched the TV the more things just didn’t make sense. It’s hard to explain but it was just very strange television that seemed to be pertaining to me, I thought everyone in the world was passively giving me messages through television that the government knew I was a target of terrorism and that I had something to do with “911” and was giving out classified military information to outside sources. I know now that none of this was true but at the time it seemed very real to me.
To add to my paranoia one of the dorm Bay Orderlies or possibly my neighbor had taken the trash can from the kitchen. It returned a day later. I thought everyone on the base was in on some sort of conspiracy to corrupt me and even if I was innocent they would incriminate me with some kind of war crime. I had the notion that they were looking in my trash for information. I started being careful with what I threw away. Along with the television the radio, books, magazines, even the Bible didn’t seem right. The words were changing to pertain to me. I was in the bath room reading a “Readers Digest” and suddenly I was reading all about my self and my supervisor and everyone I worked with. The article was complete with pictures and everything, I closed it and when I reopened it the article had vanished. I didn’t know who or what to trust. I always had faith and trust in God but even the Holy Bible was not right, when I read it, it was like reading Satan’s Bible. I was terrified. I could not escape from my madness.
That’s when I made a 911 and had an ambulance come and pick me up. My mind was completely melted, I didn’t know what else to do. I needed help. I went in to the ER at Sacred Heart Medical Center and told the doctors and later my supervisor that I had been stressed to wits end and contemplated suicide but did not let anyone know of my delusions. I was sent home with my supervisor and spent the night at his place. The doctors had given me a drug to help me relax. The next day I went to the AGS First Sergeant and Chief Martinez to talk about my position as a jet engine mechanic. Chief Martinez was very kind to me in my strife and helped me a great deal later. I told the Chief I didn’t want to be deployed and that deployment along with newly attained responsibilities frightened me. He made me undeployable and put me in Tool Crib to hand out tools and keep track of inventory.
In Tool Crib there was less stress but at this point even learning how to do the most simple of tasks was difficult. I later asked to be a dorm Bay Orderly and was in charge of cleaning the dorms along with a team of four others. The stress diminished but the paranoia continued. I thought everyone on the base was watching me and hated me for selling out my country. I thought that my dorm room had cameras and microphones in the vents but didn’t check because I didn’t want them to know I was on to them. After about a week as a Bay Orderly and not eating or sleeping in days and just sitting in my room staring into space I was very deep into a psychosis. Suddenly I forgot who I was for a moment and decided to write on a piece of paper who I was and tape it to my bedside in the event I should wake up and not remember who in fact I was.
There was an occurrence in the Cyber Café which was on the base that really scared me. I was sitting watching TV on a flat panel screen on the wall when suddenly there were closed captions that appeared and were talking to me directly, telling me that everyone knew what I was up to and asked what my intentions were. I thought that since I was in a Cyber Café that the people on computers were uploading all these words onto the TV screen, it made perfect sense to me and supported my conspiracy theory. The next day the Chief brought me in to the hospital again after one of my friends had reported my strange behavior and beliefs that I had told him about. This friend was Frenante Luab my one and only true friend on the base. I was admitted in the psychiatric ward at the hospital for 2 weeks involuntarily for failure to sign-in. In my evaluation I told the doctor with the Chief present that I was hearing voices that were telling me I was going to die, the voices were like that from hell. I heard people screaming in agony. I think they were demons. After I was admitted they tried to get me to sign-in again, when they gave me the paper I signed in as Satan. So I had gone from Prophet to Devils Advocate in the course of about 2 weeks.
Once in the hospital I was put on anti-psychotics and after a few days the voices stopped but when I read literature in books and magazines it still eerily pertained to me. There were people in the ward that I thought were undercover FBI agents posing as patients. This did not make my recovery any easier, its like wherever I went I couldn’t escape the conspirators. While in the hospital the AGS Commander came with a paper for me to sign waiving my rights to protest a discharge, I signed it.
When I was released from the hospital, I was to discharge from the military immediately and the Chief made this process go along in an expedient manner and within 2 days I was completely discharged honorably with my the MGI Bill granted. I felt that somehow I had been pardoned and was happy that all this had come to an end. Before ever going to the hospital the first time I was tested and evaluated by mental health professionals on the base and they concluded that I had suffered from a personality disorder most of my life that included cluster C characteristics that deviated very much from the norm and that the disorder impaired my existence in a military environment and that civilian life with very low stress and medication would help me recover. The civilian mental health doctors on the other hand concluded I suffered form schizophrenia. It is the diagnosis of schizophrenia that I agree with most from what I have read and understand of the disease and is ultimately what my present doctor, Phil Miller, believes I have.
As I drove home to South Dakota with my mother I still had paranoia that I was being followed. At every gas station that we stopped at along the way I would see the signs “security cameras in use” and imagined this was just another way for the government to keep an eye on me. I was so relieved to finally be home, for the first time in a long while I felt safe. Two days after arriving home I was scheduled to get set up for health care at the VA and follow up with Dr. Phil Miller in mental health. It was 10 months before I came fully back to reality and got a job at Millennium Recycling as a sorter. It was very low stress and I enjoyed it because I could listen to music and no one bothered me and I had a great supervisor.
This job was very humbling and I think that’s why it appealed to me. It kept my mind busy and away from strange thoughts. I worked there for 1yr and 4mos before getting a job at Saturn Of Sioux Falls as a Lube Technician. This let my true talent come out as a mechanic while at the same time keeping me occupied. I attained many friends and absolutely loved my job until Jarod Stevens became the manager and threw my whole world upside down again.
Jarod Stevens is an Anti-Christian, Hitler loving, racist exhibiting, self centered, egotistical, bastard that rose to power as an absolute tyrant in his own right in the Saturn Express Lube. And all his personality came equipped with a full wardrobe of sheep’s clothing. I befriended him in the beginning but then grew to hate him as an enemy when he became my boss. I have no problem with authority figures but Jarod brought authority to new heights. I wish I had never met him. It was about a year after having him as my boss, almost 2 years altogether at Saturn that I had my second meltdown. I started drinking very heavily at home, mainly Vodka in large volumes. I would sit in my apartment and drink with racing thoughts about work and how much I hated working for Jarod. I’d pass out, wake up, drink some more, and pass out again.
In the month of August 2006 my sister needed help moving to a new apartment. I told her I would help but that she would have to do her part as well. She suffers from chronic depression and its hard for her to get the smallest tasks completed without an extraordinary amount of time and help form others. She had about a month to find a new apartment, pack, get a truck, and clean the old apartment. Well, she sat on it up until about a week and half before the due date. She had plenty of boxes that my dad had provided with absolutely nothing in them a week from having to be out of there. The only boxes that were packed were those of Sarah’s things. Sarah is my niece. I had to step in and do everything for my sister but not without first asking Jarod for a week off. I didn’t get the time requested but did everything for my sister anyway. I went with her and found a place, packed all her things, got a truck, moved her things, cleaned the old apartment, and later got everything situated in the new apartment while at the same time working full-time at Saturn. I had been “burning the candle on both ends” and was physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted.
I confronted my boss one day and told him that I sensed a tension between us and that I wanted to make peace with it. He came over that night and we talked things over. I told him about my condition and what happened in WA and what I thought of him and that I didn’t agree with the way he treated his employees. I told him it was getting on my nerves how he talked about himself all day long and how great his life was. I told him “each and every one of these people that work for you has something special about themselves, they may not talk about it day in and day out but they do” and that “it’s better to keep one’s pride to himself.” He disagreed with me on a lot of issues but also agreed that I had made some good points.
The next morning I showed up for work intoxicated and with a bad attitude. I performed maintenance on a few vehicles before Jarod found that I was intoxicated an asked me to come with him into the General Manager’s office. He presented me with a write-up that stated that coming to work the way I had was unacceptable and that this is a warning and that I wasn’t fired but if it happens in the future I would be terminated. He sent me home for the day and later came over to talk with me some more. We talked for a couple hours, he told me that he was worried about me and that I should seek help. I was scheduled to work the following day, I didn’t sleep that night nor had I slept much the entire week. I listened to Ensor’s Sermons that I had on cassette and suddenly felt so high on life and one with the Holy Spirit, I would later say I had been hit with the Holy Spirit. I called 911 and told the operator I needed help, that I couldn’t calm down, that I needed to be tranquilized because I was on a spiritual high. The police showed up at my door and stayed with me until the ambulance arrived. While I waited I preached to the police officers and told them of my experience and tried to convince them that there truly is a God and I’m iron clad proof of this.
I was admitted at Avera Behavioral Health and was given a psychiatric evaluation that concluded I was having strange thoughts and was very hyper religious. I was told that my goals while there were to try and remedy my behavior and think more clearly. I was given Zyprexa and group therapy sessions all of which helped me to calm down and vent a little. I calmed down but my religious high proceeded for about a month. I was there 3 days before being discharged with an undetermined diagnosis and was to follow up with Dr. Miller at the VA. Is was Wednesday when I was discharged and I told Jarod I was out and that I was taking the rest of the week off and would return the following Monday. On Friday I received from Jarod that he had spoken with his superiors and they told him that I should not have gotten a warning but should have been terminated the day of the incident. He called to inform me that I was terminated effective immediately, I told him I was fine with that and was actually somewhat relieved to not ever have to look at him again. I would later conduct a hearing with Jarod and other people involved in my employment and appeal the decision of termination on the grounds of wrongful termination due to a discrimination of a mental illness. I had copies of the warning Jarod and I had signed. I thought this document covered my offense of intoxication as it stated this is a warning and that I am not terminated. I had no further offense at work since the write-up and had not even returned back to work from being in the hospital before they made the decision to terminate me.
I don’t disagree with them, I think that intoxication at work should not be allowed and tolerated but it’s just the fact that I had been written up by a supervisor that should have known how to do his job in the first place and should have made the decision to terminate me at that moment. It makes it look more to me like I was terminated for something other than that which I had already been counseled on and forgiven for and if I I lost my job I think Jarod should’ve gone down with me. Being terminated for intoxication made it impossible for me to get unemployment benefits. It was very hard for me to pay my bills. I sold my Jeep and a bearskin rug that I had been meaning to sell for quite a while so I could pay my rent.
I got a job at the same car wash I had originally worked at years ago as my first job. I worked there for about a month before getting my present job as a Men’s Fitness Center Manager at the YMCA. I love this job and couldn’t be happier. I don’t get to use my mechanics skills but there is always new skills to be obtained and utilized as I’ve never had a Supervisor’s position before. I try to think of new ways to run things better and keep my employees happy. Besides managing the Men’s Fitness Center I also manage the Laundry Staff. I really like working for a Christian organization and like the mission statement, “to serve all people and help them reach their God-given potential through the development of the spirit, mind, and body.
I’m thankful each day. I thank God each day for everything he has given me. I have a good job, recently 1994 Volvo 850, and a nice apartment with a great neighbor next door. My mother is now in remission of her cancer and is in good spirits. My sister continues to find herself in constant distress and in need of constant assistance but I pray she can get things worked out, she is currently homeless and seeking an apartment after getting evicted from the apartment that I worked so hard to get her into and got kicked off of housing which will make finding a place very hard. I’ve been at the YMCA for about a year now without any psychiatric problems and try each day to get better and maybe one day go back to school to further my education. I had taken some classes at NAU but dropped out because I couldn’t concentrate on school and work at the same time. Maybe some day I can write a book about my experiences with mental illness that will raise awareness and reduce the stigma that has been placed on those who are mentally ill. It has been going on since the dawn of time.
