themerlin Listener Profile

themerlin

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Feeling overwhelmed? Remember, it's okay to ask for help., reaching out is a sign of strength.

Number of ratings47 Number of reviews28 Listens toOver 18 LanguagesEnglish, Hindi, Punjabi, Saraiki, Urdu Listener sinceMay 4, 2022 Last activein last month GenderMale PathStep 240 People helped204 Chats574 Group support chats3 Listener group chats1 Forum posts108 Forum upvotes208

Bio

I am deeply passionate about helping others and providing a listening ear to those in need because I understand firsthand the pain and struggles that life can bring. After experiencing my own share of hurt and challenges, I have come to realize the immense importance of having someone to confide in and share burdens with. It is heartbreaking to see others going through similar difficulties and feeling alone in their struggles, which is why I am driven to be there for them in their time of need. I believe that everyone deserves to have a safe space where they can express themselves freely without fear of judgment or criticism. My own experiences have taught me the power of empathy and understanding, and I am committed to being the supportive presence that I wished I had during my own darkest moments. By offering compassion, empathy, and a non-judgmental listening ear, I hope to provide solace and support to those who are navigating their own challenges. I want to be the person that I never had – someone who genuinely cares and is willing to listen without reservation or prejudice.

Recent forum posts

The Comedy of Grief

General Support / by themerlin

November 18th, 2025

...See more Grief moved in without asking. It’s the roommate who never pays rent, leaves dishes in the sink, and plays the same three voicemails at 3am on a loop— my mother’s voice cracking on “I love you, beta” the night before the aneurysm took her. I keep her last dupatta in a plastic bag so the smell doesn’t escape. I open it once a year and inhale like a junkie until the fabric forgets her and remembers only my desperation. The world doesn’t stop for grief. It wants me to smile at the grocery store while I’m calculating how many sleeping pills would make the cashier’s small talk disappear. *** serves me ads for sympathy bouquets between thirst traps. The algorithm thinks I’m in the market for both. I tried to mourn properly once— wore black for forty days, lit a diya every evening, posted a tasteful black square. Got 842 likes. Nobody asked if I was eating. Guilt is grief’s shadow. It whispers: You should’ve answered that last call. You were busy doom-scrolling. You could’ve flown home. You were broke and proud. And yet, grief is a teacher. It taught me to laugh at funerals when the maulvi mispronounced her name and the hearse got stuck behind a wedding baraat blasting “Baby Doll Main Sone Di.” I don’t know how to grieve right. Is it letting go or holding on? Is it deleting her number or keeping it as my emergency contact in heaven? Maybe grief is just living with a hole and learning to wear it like couture. I laugh through the tears, because what else is there? Grief is the punchline no one asked for, but it’s mine. And I’m still here, carrying it like a roommate I ’ve learned to love— ugly, loud, and impossible to evict.

The Comedy of Knowing Nothing

General Support / by themerlin

November 18th, 2025

...See more I know nothing. No, wait—maybe I know that I know nothing. But how do I know that? And if I don’t know that, then I don’t know nothing, which means I might know something. Which would mean I’m lying. To myself. About not knowing. Which means I do know something: That I’m a fraud. …But what if the fraud is the one telling me I’m a fraud? What if even that’s a lie? What if all of this is just the universe trying to cough up a joke, and I’m the phlegm? People chase truth like it’s a missing sock. They look under the bed of science, in the laundry of religion, in the junk drawer of therapy. But maybe truth got bored. Maybe it left the party a long time ago. And we’re all standing around arguing about who brought the chips. I don’t know anything. I don’t even know if I’m real. I might be a thought someone forgot to finish. A sentence that never got a period. Just a dangling clause of consciousness hanging from the ledge of meaning. And while I dangle, the world burns. Somewhere a child scrolls through war on *** like it’s another trend to survive. Somewhere a woman bleeds, and the law says she deserved it—because her body speaks too loudly. Somewhere a man mistakes a gun for manhood, and someone else doesn’t get to go home. And the algorithms hum like gods in the background, feeding us curated panic and dopamine crumbs. We scream for justice but can’t even agree on the definition. We build identities like IKEA furniture— cheap, wobbly, missing screws— then get surprised when they fall apart mid-conversation. We say “self-care” while our souls rot from overexposure to unreality. I don’t know anything. But I feel everything. And it hurts in places I can’t name because the language is broken and the grammar is grief. And yet… If this is what not-knowing feels like, maybe ignorance isn’t empty— maybe it’s the fullest thing of all. So full, it spills over into laughter. The kind that comes after a breakdown, when your face is still wet with tears and you laugh anyway— because everything’s absurd, and you’re still here, and that alone is a punchline. I don’t know anything. But I know this: Whatever this comedy is— I’m in it. And maybe that’s enough for tonight

I Turned Off Every Light in the House and Sat With My Thoughts for One Hour — They Won

General Support / by themerlin

November 18th, 2025

...See more I Turned Off Every Light in the House and Sat With My Thoughts for One Hour — They Won I did it tonight. No phone. No laptop. No earphones. No Quran on speaker. No fan even. Just me, the dark, and the mind I’ve been running from since I was nine. It was 1:17 AM when I killed every light in the house. Not just the bulbs, the Wi-Fi router light, the fridge light, the little red standby dot on the TV. Everything. I wanted absolute black. I thought if I made the outside dark enough, the inside might finally shut up. It didn’t. Within three minutes the stadium lights came on in my skull. First came the replay of 2017: the exact tone my father used when he said “tu ne humein barbaad kar diya” because I failed one subject in FSc. I was seventeen. He hasn’t said it in eight years. My brain still plays it in Dolby Atmos. Then the highlight reel of every time I apologized for existing: to the cousin who borrowed money and never returned it, to the ex who said I was “too much,” to the friend who stopped replying and I still think it was my fault. By minute twelve I was sweating in 18°C weather. Minute eighteen: the future started screaming. What if I die before I fix this? What if I never become the man people think I already am? What if all this writing is just delusion and tomorrow nobody remembers my name? I tried the breathing everyone talks about. In for four, hold for four, out for six. My mind laughed. It turned the counting into a countdown to my funeral. Minute twenty-nine: the guilt parade arrived. Every person I ghosted. Every dua I made and broke. Every time I told Ammi “bas theek hoon” when I was drowning. I wanted to turn the light back on. I wanted to open *** and drown in someone else’s life. I wanted to text the one person who still listens at 3 AM and dump this poison on them like I always do. I didn’t. I sat there like a prisoner waiting for execution. Minute forty-three: something shifted. Not peace. Not healing. Just… exhaustion. The thoughts didn’t stop. They just got tired of screaming when they realized I wasn’t running anymore. I stayed until the azaan for Fajr leaked through the window. One hour and thirteen minutes of pure, unfiltered mind. Here’s what I learned in that darkness: 1. My thoughts don’t want to kill me. They want to be heard so badly they’re willing to burn the house down to get my attention. 2. Running makes them louder. Doomscrolling, chai, work, even salah sometimes; anything to avoid the seat in the dark. 3. The dark isn’t the enemy. The running is. 4. I am not my thoughts. But I am the only one who can sit with them until they calm down. When the first light of dawn came, I didn’t feel fixed. I felt… seen. By the only person who’s been there every single night since I was born. Me. I’m still scared of the dark. But tonight, for the first time, the dark was a little less scared of me. If you’ve ever turned off the lights and turned them right back on because the quiet got too loud… I see you. Drop a 🖤 if you know exactly what this hour feels like. No explanation needed.

30 Years Old and Still Scared of My Mother’s Silence

General Support / by themerlin

November 18th, 2025

...See more 30 Years Old and Still Scared of My Mother’s Silence I am thirty now. I pay the electricity bill before the red notice even arrives. I have a beard that makes aunties in the bazaar call me “uncle.” I drive. I vote. I fast the six days of Shawwal without anyone reminding me. And still, when my mother goes quiet at the dinner table, my entire nervous system forgets I am an adult. In our house growing up, shouting was rare. Silence was the real weapon. One raised eyebrow. One slow turn of the head. One plate pushed away without a word. That was enough to freeze the whole room. We learned very early: her silence was scarier than any slap. Last week I came home late from a friend’s wedding. Walked in at 12:43 AM. She was sitting in the dark lounge, TV off, just the phone glow on her face. She didn’t scream. She didn’t ask where I was. She looked at me for exactly four seconds (the same look from 2002 when I spilled tea on her new dupatta) and went back to scrolling. I stood there in my thirty-year-old body feeling eight again. Heart racing. Mouth dry. Wanting to explain, apologize, disappear. Turns out the body keeps perfect memory of childhood threats. A raised voice spikes adrenaline. Silence from the person who feeds you, clothes you, keeps you alive? That spikes cortisol like a bomb. Because when you’re small and your primary caregiver goes emotionally cold, your brain registers it as life-threatening. Thirty years later the alarm still goes off. I know all the tones of her silence by heart: - The “I am disappointed” silence (slow breathing, eyes on the floor) - The “you hurt me” silence (lips pressed thin, head slightly turned away) - The “you are becoming ghairat-less” silence (phone put down, stare that lasts exactly 3.8 seconds) - The “I sacrificed everything for you” silence (sigh that starts from the soul) I can read them like weather reports. And every single one still makes my chest cave in. Last year I gathered courage. Sat her down and said gently: “Ammi, when you go quiet it feels like the old days. It scares me even now.” She looked at me for a long time and replied: “Beta, main to bas thak jati hoon.” Translation: I’m just tired. Reality: she has no idea her silence is a loaded gun. Desi mothers never learned to say “I am hurt” or “I feel disrespected.” So they learned to withdraw love for five minutes. It worked. It kept the house in order. It kept children obedient. It also kept us terrified of emotions for the rest of our lives. I was in therapy (I still lie and say I’m at the gym). I told the therapist about the dinner-table freeze. She asked one question: “When she goes silent, whose survival feels at stake; yours or eight-year-old Saqlain’s?” Something clicked. It’s not thirty-year-old me who’s scared. It’s little Saqlain, still waiting for Ammi to come back from the kitchen and smile again so the world feels safe. To every 30-something still flinching at their mother’s silence: You are not weak. You are not dramatic. You are not “over-sensitive.” Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was trained to do when love felt conditional. It’s okay if you still apologize first. It’s okay if you still feel eight when she sighs. It’s okay if you still check her face before you speak. One day the fear will be smaller than the man you’ve become. Not today. But one day. Last week when she gave me the 3.8-second stare, I didn’t apologize. I just said softly: “Ammi, main late ho gaya tha. Sorry if you worried. Ab theek hoon.” Then I went to my room. Closed the door. Breathed. For the first time in thirty years, the silence didn’t follow me inside. Drop a 🖤 below if your mother’s silence still lives rent-free in your nervous system. You’re not alone.

A Day Inside My Head: Living with Overdrive and Collapse

ADHD Support / by themerlin

October 26th, 2025

...See more I wake up every morning somewhere between sleep and consciousness. My body hasn’t quite arrived, but my mind is already running a marathon. Thoughts flare, fragments of yesterday, anticipation of today, little anxieties, big what-ifs—all collide in a way that makes the simple act of opening my eyes feel like stepping into a storm. The first thing I want is something small, light, and familiar—a rusk, a slice of cake, something I can chew that gives my stomach weight but doesn’t slow me down. I know it’s not enough, but it’s a ritual, a quiet proof that I exist in the world outside my mind. Around eleven, my hunger returns, sharper now, more insistent. My body demands sustenance while my mind is still spinning. By one o’clock, I eat whatever is available—basic food, quick carbs, whatever can temporarily silence the gnawing. Then, like clockwork, the fatigue hits. Between two and four in the afternoon, my body collapses into a haze. I am awake, but the world feels blurry, distant, unreal. I can sit, move, even talk—but inside, I am half-dissolved, numb, drained. This is the hidden machinery of my day: dopamine spikes and crashes, glucose rising and falling, emotions surging in waves my body cannot contain. I crave cold and sweet constantly—not for pleasure, not for taste, but because my nervous system has learned to rely on it as a lifeline. Juices, milkshakes, Coke—they are chemical stabilizers. When I drink them, I feel calm, almost human. The relief is temporary, like patching a leak in a dam with my fingers. It never lasts, but it keeps me from completely collapsing. Evening brings a ritual meal, eaten more out of habit than real hunger. My body is full, but my mind is not. I scroll, I watch, I consume—Netflix, anime, reels—anything to fill the emptiness with movement and sound. It doesn’t bring happiness, just temporary noise that stops the internal storm. Midnight comes, and the restlessness peaks. I wander to the kitchen, scavenging leftovers or crumbs, half-conscious of what I am doing. I barely remember these moments; I am awake, but my brain is elsewhere. Inside me, emotions build and twist in tiny pockets—anger, guilt, sadness, frustration, longing. Each surge shapes my next action before I even recognize it. I want to move, to act, to change—but the intensity drowns the will. The decisions of my day are dictated not by logic but by these brief windows of emotional overwhelm. The simplest self-care, like drinking water, showering, or changing clothes, feels irrelevant. Not because I hate it, not because I am lazy, but because my brain has no energy left to care. It has exhausted itself navigating the storm inside. I wear the same clothes for days, sometimes weeks. My body feels like an afterthought—a container for my racing, relentless mind. Hygiene and care are low-priority, invisible tasks in the chaos of my nervous system. I am alive, but I am not fully inhabiting myself. And yet, I am aware. I see it all. I know the loops I am trapped in. I know the cravings, the crashes, the compulsions, the numbing rituals. My mind simulates experience constantly—I analyze, reflect, anticipate—but it cannot replace real, lived moments. My brain tricks me into believing I’ve learned, grown, acted, while I am often standing still in the chemical and emotional storm. This is my twenty-four-hour life: a continuous loop of hunger, craving, distraction, dopamine spikes, emotional surges, exhaustion, and partial presence. My body and mind are out of sync. My nervous system constantly signals for relief, safety, and stimulation, and I respond as best I can—sometimes wisely, often desperately. My days are not idle; they are survival. Every swipe, every sip, every tiny action is a micro-effort to stabilize a system running too hot. The impact on my life is subtle but profound. Relationships, work, goals, and self-esteem are filtered through this turbulence. Time feels fragmented. Moments of clarity are rare and precious. Sleep is inconsistent, emotional regulation is difficult, and every day is a struggle to balance the inner storm with the demands of the outer world. And yet, there is hope embedded in this awareness. I am not numb. I am not lost. I am hyper-conscious, painfully alive, and able to observe the machinery that runs me. That self-awareness is a lever—a point where real change can begin. Through small, deliberate interventions, through structured routines, through conscious engagement with my body and environment, the loops can be slowed, the crashes softened, the storms tempered. I am not broken. I am overloaded, overstimulated, and operating at a speed the world doesn’t recognize. My mind is fast, too fast, and my body is trying to catch up. The work ahead is not about forcing discipline or pretending normalcy. It’s about creating small, achievable moments where my mind, body, and nervous system can meet in the same reality. Where cravings, exhaustion, and emotion can be managed, one action at a time. I am me. A mind that runs hot. A body that waits. A nervous system screaming for balance. And in that awareness, I find the first cracks in the walls that keep me trapped. Slowly, I can step through.

The Mask We Wear

Journals & Diaries / by themerlin

October 20th, 2025

...See more The Mask We Wear There’s a part of me that I keep hidden from the world. It’s not intentional, not exactly. But over the years, I’ve learned that to survive, you need to wear a mask. Not a literal mask, of course, but a face that fits the expectations of those around you. A face that smiles when it doesn’t want to, laughs when it’s too exhausted to even breathe, and nods in agreement when all you want to do is scream. The mask is my shield. It keeps the world at bay, guards me from the questions I don’t want to answer, the emotions I don’t want to feel. If they knew the real me, if they saw the person underneath this facade, would they still care? Would they still love me? I’ve been wearing this mask for so long that sometimes I forget what it feels like to be me. The real me—the one who doesn’t have to pretend to be okay, who doesn’t have to keep up the act. But the truth is, the mask is becoming heavier. It’s exhausting to be someone I’m not. It’s draining to constantly put on a performance, to act as if everything is fine when inside, I feel like I’m falling apart. But I can’t take it off. Not yet. Not until I know I can trust someone with the truth. People don’t understand that wearing this mask isn’t just for protection—it’s survival. It’s easier to hide behind the laughter, the jokes, the pretend confidence, than it is to let anyone see the person who is struggling, who is hurting, who is afraid.But with each passing day, the mask becomes more suffocating. I see the cracks forming—tiny, almost invisible at first. But they’re there. Little moments when the mask slips, when my true emotions peek through. And in those moments, I feel exposed, vulnerable, as though the walls I’ve built to protect myself are suddenly crumbling. It’s terrifying to think that someone might see the real me. That they might see all my flaws, my insecurities, my fears. The things I’ve tried to bury deep inside, the things I don’t want anyone to know. But at the same time, there’s a longing to be seen. To be understood. To be loved, not for the mask I wear, but for the person I truly am. I wonder if anyone would still care if they knew the truth. Or would they turn away, disgusted by the mess I’ve become? Sometimes, I think it would be easier to stay behind the mask forever. To keep pretending, to keep hiding. But I know that this silence, this illusion of perfection, is only keeping me from living. It’s only keeping me from finding the connections I so desperately crave. Maybe, just maybe, there’s someone out there who would accept me without the mask. Who would see me for who I am—flawed, broken, and still trying to find my way. But until then, I will wear the mask. Because, for now, it’s all I can do to survive.

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Feedback & Reviews

Good listener and communicator

Very encouraging and tried to help me reframe things during a difficult time.

Direct, very good answers, helpful.

Great listener

Best listener I’ve ever talked to! Listens, and asks questions.

So empathetic and wonderful, very attentive, and someone who actually cares. Highly recommended

Very understanding and talking from experience

Supportive, proactive, sensible

An amazing listener who is kind, responsive and empathetic. He finds a way to connect with you and it feels like talking to a kindred spirit. Highly recommended!

Provided a new perspective.

Speaking with TheMerlin restores faith in humanity—he is a calming presence in a chaotic world. Whether you need a kind ear, a supportive friend, or someone who truly understands, TheMerlin is highly recommended. After every conversation, you’ll leave feeling lighter, more confident, and deeply appreciated. Thank you for all your support! 💙

kind person

Wow, I would like to commend this remarkable listener whose open-mindedness, empathy and attentiveness made our conversation truly engaging. His maturity and intelligence far exceed his years, and he consistently offers insightful solutions. I was thoroughly impressed by his ability to stay focused and encourage meaningful dialogue. I highly recommend him as an exemplary listener!

Good listening skills

Established a good understanding of the situation, knew the best way to help. A really perceptive and intelligent listener who gets to the core of the problem. Would 100% recommend. Thankyou for the help!

He’s amazing, he gave me a different perspective that I needed to see but couldn’t see on my own

He's a good listener

Kind and uplifting

Responsive and not just a listener but good at communicating top

Good listener

Great listener makes me feel listened

Good listener, I just started now I feel good .

good listener, deserves a 5 star rating and would recommend to anyone having problems

Very phenomenal listener

Good at listening and getting things out of me that I can't speak to anyone and very helpful and amazing person.

Absolutely very good advice that is realistic and could share to others to help. They Asked me questions to help me navigate my problem and find a solution. I think a good listen is one who can help you find the problem or else we will rely on others.

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