If you are a merit source, then your merit page will come up like the below purple highlighted two paragraphs (though not really purple in real life) - noteably the difference in the second paragraph for merit sources:

>>>>>>>>You have received a total of XXXX merit. This is what determines your forum rank. You typically cannot lose this merit. You have XXX sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people. There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future.

You are a merit source. The next XXX merit you spend will come from your source rather than your sMerit balance. Merit spent from your source will come back in 30 days. Unused source merit is wasted. It is not allowed for merit sources to sell their merit.<<<<<<<<<<<<

As you may recall, the merit system activated on January 24, and therefore it was thought that if merit sources spent their smerits, then those smerits would start to replenish into the merit source on about February 23 - however, theymos stated that he had run into some glitch in the way that he had programmed the replenishment of merit source merits - in essence the script or the algorithm was screwed up.  

It appears that theymos fixed that merit source replenishment glitch on about March 5, and replenishment of merit source smerits began again around March 5.