Alone I sit, as he watches

A shadow lost in a world of criticism, he tries to find a light to hold on to, to stay alive. "He just needs to make a conscious decision to think about things - and to feel something."
I started to see some of this, if not quite as clearly. He wanted to survive, or at least endure. You could say he was looking for a way to live his life, knowing that he would never see the light of day again.
 A decision you could only make if you were already dead. Or dying, as they thought of it, living. If you weren't, then your life was meaningless. When I met him, I couldn't even imagine what he'd do. How he got up the courage to ask what his problem was? Just to know that it could be solved.
That there was hope, even if he wouldn't ever see it again. I thought about how he found the strength to pull his head out of his chest, from this hell. To look up at me with those huge, blue, glowing eyes.
 For a moment, I envied him. How he stood up, holding his hands out to me in the dark. Then, shaking his massive head, his eyes still glowing, like a cat's, the words I'd hear when I finally saw him in my head. "I can do this."
He smiled at that. "I'm not going anywhere." And he did. What I had been trying to say, for years, could not be said. His life had gone on, seemingly without incident. In fact, though I was living in one of those old Soviet-era apartments with no hot water, in this cold, dark, dank place, he somehow still fills the room with more sadness than I could imagine.
 My life now. Not a matter of life or death, it's not even a question. None of that mattered. Because if I died, no one would miss me.
And yet no matter how pathetic of a life I have, that shadow will always be shunned by society and lost in a devastating wonderland.