i did it your way

and that he would exist only in the presence of someone else; be great and amazing when somebody said so, just as easily as he was unworthy and a failure if someone so deemed. in between R was nothing, less than nothing because even nothing is something, there is a thing in nothing; but he wasn't even that, he just wasn't there. 

but as soon as someone would come, anyone, it didn't matter really - as long as someone was there, in the same space, someone he could bounce from and validate himself; well that was enough. that was what made R alive, the only thing he needed in order to exist, and that was what made him. like the ground of an arid area he immersed the characteristics and attributes with a need of a man dying of thirst; it was like his life would have depended on them.

and in many ways, it did. 

so he just took them, the opinions and definitions of himself, as they were given to him by others and then adjusted himself accordingly to enforce the given traits. some of the ways he was described he might have liked and some of them he might have hated, had he been capable of giving them this kind of value; had he been able to have an opinion of his own. but he didn't so he just followed the lead; and that was good, and he was satisfied with it.