The Next Step in Deserve

In July of 2006 I contemplated suicide. I was running at the time on one of my favourite, most familiar places on Vancouver Island, Mount Doug, and it was a beautiful day. Its both strange and not surprising that the impetus for such an act occurred while sprinting along the back-trails of this hill, its giant trees dropping dappled light along the well worn path.

I had allowed my life to become unbearable. My relationship with Kathleen, with whom I had spent the last eleven years, was in shambles. I had started a clandestine affair two weeks before with a woman who to this very day will always be my angel of salvation. She didn’t save me from a horrible relationship, understand; she saved me from myself.

In addition to my relationship, I couldn’t seem to get my feet under me financially. I was flat broke. I had started my new business just a year earlier, and though I had served some amazing clients, most of my jobs were short, and didn’t pay very well. I was in the hole at the end of every month, borrowing more and more money to pay the mortgage and make sure the kids had what Kat and I thought they needed.

I came to a black space in my ability to see through the veil of darkness, and in that blackness, imaged that the only way out was to punch my own ticket.

I didn’t. I never really got close. But the experience jarred me into aciton. I made some dramatic changes, some of which are being chronicled elsewhere. Part of my karma at this time is to share these things with the world (all seven of you who read this blog) so that others might learn from the lessons my life is revealing to me.)

In the shadow of that darkness, the biggest lesson I had to learn is this: I deserve success.

During my run on Mount Doug, and in the days and weeks afterwards, I had to face the fact that the primary story of my life to that moment had been that Stephen Legault didn’t deserve to succeed. He didn’t deserve to fail. He just didn’t deserve to succeed. I had doomed myself through my own mythology to purgatory.

I had said to myself so many times that “the universe won’t let me fail” that it had become rote. It was true, I had never failed, not completely. But I had come close. My experience with Wildcanada.net’s demise was heart breaking for many, including myself. I had been within five hundred dollars of bankruptcy several times. And now, for a few brief but terrifying moments, I thought that the only way I could escape myself was by engineering my own swan-song.

I had said that the universe wouldn’t let me fail, but I had never said, “the universe will conspire in my success beyond my wildest dreams.”

I started saying that. A lot.

I focused on work, and amazing things started happening. The story began to change. Reality began to resemble the mythology that I was recreating. I believed the mythology. I deserved success.

Now, just over one year into the refashioning of this mythology, I’ve come to see that I need to take the next step in deserve.

I deserve to be loved.

I deserve success in love.

I am surrounded by love. My children, whom I just tucked into bed, love me in a way that is astonishing. Rio on one side and Silas on the other, their arms wrapped around me, and Rio says through the groggy miasma of sleep, “I love you as big as all the universe.”

My parents love me. My friends love me. I have people in my life – Kate Dugas, James Pratt, Sarah Pullman, many others – who don’t hesitate to tell me that they love me. That is a gift. I love them bottomlessly.

Hell, Kathleen loves me. To me, that is astonishing.

I deserve to be loved. We all do.

The love that I have to give is gigantic in proportion. I deserve someone who can handle that.

I deserve to be in a relationship where I can love freely.

I deserve to love, and be loved, deeply, opening, without hesitation and without fear.

I deserve to love, and be loved, even when I am unlovable, which is pretty damn often frankly.

I deserve to be loved in a way that allows me to grow sexually, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, all at the same time. I want to love in a way that allows someone else to grow too.

I have not idea where I got it into my head that I didn’t deserve this. Maybe it’s the way I was born. Maybe that’s how we are all born. Maybe its learned, or some kind of social conditioning. The fact is, I’m done with that story. Its yesterday’s illusion. Today, now, I deserve love, and deserve to be in love with someone who wants love in return.