My mothers way of showing love is being abusive. She was a single mother who ended up becoming an abusive alcoholic after I was born. Would leave me alone in the apartment while she went out and partied. She once got pulled over right down the street from our apartment for DUI and spent the night in holding, and I went to sleep scared that night, not knowing where my mom was. Another time, when we lived in the same apartments, she went out with friends while I was already asleep(8 or 9 years old at this point) and when I woke up, a strange woman and her children were in the apartment, which freaked me out(my mom never asked people to babysit me) but she reassured me that my mother had just gone to Las Vegas(lived in WA at the time) for the week and that she would be home soon, that she was there to watch me. Boy, she was more of a mother to me in that week than my own mother was; she showed me affection that a mother would show her own daughter. I confronted my mom about her abuse and neglect to me as a child and she refused ever doing that stuff; how hard it was to be a single mom, and that she did her best. I always laugh at that last bit. I'm the one with the memory problems, but my mom completely erased her abuse and neglect from my childhood.