I see myself as a loyal friend and try to maintain friendships over the years. I have quite a few that have lasted decades. I'm coming up to retirement so am more than usually conscious that it is important to have / keep friends (I'm also married).
Some have fizzled and died due to circumstances and I accept that. Others I realise I never felt that comfortable with, so why bother continuing.
But one in particular is bugging me at the moment. We used to be pretty close. We worked together for a few years (that's how we met), we live close to each other (walking distance) and our children went to the same primary school (now youngest is 18). She has been a single parent throughout so I used to go to hers in the evening when her child was in bed and we'd have a bottle of wine and chat for hours. We'd also go out with the kids, meet for coffee on our days off work when the kids were in school etc.
Now we meet 3 or 4 times a year, pretty much always at my instigation. Often only for a couple of hours, for a meal. She's always busy - has lots of friends, some she stays with for holidays. To be honest, I don't think she likes her own company and now her child is grown up and lives with a partner and she has retired from work, she is busier than ever.
The last few times we've met she's had to either change the time as she's held up elsewhere or rushed off afterwards. She never declines to meet but I feel like I'm bottom of her priority list and the conversation we have is usually a repetition of the previous time we met. I was thinking of contacting her but checking back through our messages, I see that she rarely is the one to contact me and, though I'd enjoy seeing her, I feel she doesn't care.
So should I just 'ghost" her? Maybe she just assumes I'll contact her, so is waiting for me to do so. Or maybe she never thinks of me. It feels sad to be saying this as I used to see her as a key friend, but life moves on, I suppose.