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What is a human right? An “inalienable fundamental right to which a person is inherently entitled to, simply because she or he is a human being”, Wikipedia pronounces.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs dictates that the most fundamental needs are breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis and excretion. We all have this as a physiological need.

According to Maslow, love and belonging is on the 3rd level of the pyramid. But even in our darkest depths of depravity and suffering, the one thing we desire the most, providing the majority of our physiological needs are met, is Love. We crave belonging and safety, acceptance and intimacy. The only thing we truly ask of the world to give back is Love. A little piece of care and protection is all, even for a short while.

But what about those people who don’t receive it? What about those children who aren’t asked about how their day went, who no one cares about, whom no one can be bothered with?

They don’t deserve that. They don’t deserve to be ignored and forgotten about, to be left alone to fend for themselves.

Without love, but the continuation of basic needs, they fall into the bottomless abyss of loneliness and despair. They begin to lack in feeling, in finding compassion and sympathy. They attempt to find other ways, other versions of how they believe love is supposed to feel like. Because they’ve never known, they don’t know how.

They can become clingy, possessive, desperate people, holding on tight to any kind of possible affection. They can feel the exact opposite and retreat into themselves, holding any possible attachments at arms length and walking alone through the world.

Addictions are other ways of spiriting them away from harsh reality and cocooning them in a protective silk, hiding them away in plain sight. Drugs and alcohol that blunt the truth and blur the consequences. Self harm; self-mutilation and screams for help. Screams asking if they can even feel anything anymore. They spiral down and down, maybe even finding that blessed, torturous place of ignorance. The permanent dream of insanity; where every voice is a lie and every face a fake, those people who can barely discern between reality and fantasy.

The belief behind all this is simple: if no one cares, why should I?

Why should I care what my body becomes, why should I care how I act, why should I care about the consequences?

This is why they kill themselves a tiny bit every day.

The distant reason standing behind the rows of early graves.

Each and every one of us is born with the right to take life by the hand and live it till it lets us go. How we choose to lead our life is up to us, but whatever we may do in our futures, in our beginnings at least, we deserve someone to hold us and care for us and give us a smile when we need one.

That is Love.

That is a human right.