Damn, bro you got the hard part already done.  Judging by the ridiculously low number of members who've ranked up to Legendary from scratch, you should consider yourself fortunate. 

The merit system was designed to make it hard to rank up, and it looks like it's doing a damn good job.  But Jesus, it might be making it too hard to rank up, especially for members who make good, but not excellent, posts.  I'm still thinking more merit sources might be necessary, but I have no way to know how enthusiastic the current ones are about distributing merits.  OTOH, there really haven't been too many threads in Meta lately about how frustrated members are that they aren't ranking up.  I think most members have just come to accept the fact that they won't.

You should be.  You earned it and it wasn't an easy thing to do, I'm sure.