A person can deserve success and still need favorable circumstances.

Merit and circumstance are not rivals. You can genuinely be good at something, work honestly at it for years, and still need a door to open at the right moment, because effort produces readiness rather than opportunity. Insisting that deserving should be enough sets you up to feel cheated by something that was never a promise.

Keep doing the work that makes you ready, and stop treating readiness as a receipt owed a reward. Meanwhile, when you are in a position to open a door for someone prepared, open it.