I've got a very close friend who's not really been replying to texts recently.
For some context, we've been friends for 6 years and I moved to a different country about two and a half years ago (not by choice.) When I moved, most of my friends stopped texting me, but she stayed in contact with me and we see eachother a lot when I come back to visit.
We usually text eachother (in real time) every day or every other day, but in addition to this we also send eachother a LONG list of messages (maybe around 300 each time) of things we find interesting, things going on in our lives, that kind of stuff. Because it's a lot of messages we Obviously don't expect eachother to reply to those ones immediately and it could take like 2-4 days to get a response, but we always have real-time conversations in between.
Recently it's taken like a week to respond to the long list of messages each time. which honestly I don't mind at all. it's a lot of messages and of course you can't always respond super quickly. however, the real time conversations have pretty much stopped the last month. And on top of that, she doesn't finish responding to the long messages either, just kind of stops halfway through and says she'll finish later but leaves it.
I want to clarify, I'm not pressuring for responses or anything. I'm moreso worried. If I find something interesting, I'll text her about it, but I don't ask her to respond to me or put pressure on her. I wouldn't want to come across as needy. The thing is, she means a LOT to me and my biggest fear is losing her, so this is worrying. My entire life I've had issues with friends moving away, leaving me, or getting bored of me, so I think I'm paranoid. I'm also worried for her. I'm worried something's happened and I don't know. We tell eachother pretty much everything and she'd certainly tell me if she was dealing with something but I worry all the same.
I know she isn't overly busy. I'm super absorbed in my studies (I have a lot of academic pressure on me) but she attends college two days a week and tells me she spends most of her time playing videogames. (Mood.) So I don't think it's that.
She knows I've been going through a pretty tough time with my mental health and stuff, but I withold a LOT of details because I don't want her worrying about me, thinking I vent too much, or wanting to distance herself Because I'm too much. She definitely doesn't know how much it affects me to not talk to her, and she's pretty oblivious anyway (I say this endearingly) so I don't think she'd guess how antsy I get when I don't talk to her for even a day.
I don't expect her to reply every day. She can take all the time she wants. But I'd at least like to have some real-time conversations with her, or have a reason on why she hasn't been messaging me back lately. If she lost contact with me completely I don't think I'd be able to go on.
Is there a subtle, low strings attached and friendly way I could ask her to message me more without looking too needy? Or a way I could ask her what's going on without looking posessive and getting brushed off?
I feel like a bit of a loser typing this all out, but I've already tried to ask her casually why she hadn't been responding because I was worried about her and she sort of brushed it off (I'm 95% sure she's fine, she brushed it off in a Very casual way and I've seen her online playing videogames the same time as me😭). Is there anything I could say, or anything I could say to MYSELF to try and reduce my anxiety about the whole situation?