You did not become a bad friend. You moved.

You moved abroad →

The people you grew up with are in a time zone you have to do maths for. You are asleep when they are free.

Your parents are getting older, and far away →

You mean to call on Sunday. You call three Sundays later, and the size of the gap is worse than the call would have been.

You are a bad texter and you know it →

Nothing is wrong with you. Starting a conversation out of nowhere is just harder for you than it looks from outside.

Your calendar stopped working for this →

A repeating event fires whether or not you spoke yesterday. After the fourth wrong one you stopped reading it.

Everyone scattered after university →

Six people who saw each other every day for three years, now in five cities and one group chat nobody writes in.

Out of sight really is out of mind →

If somebody is not in front of you they are not in your head. That is how your attention works, and meaning well does not change it.

You just had a baby →

You are not ignoring anyone. You are asleep by nine and the days have stopped having names.

You work from home now →

The friendships that ran on being in the same building did not survive it, and nobody noticed at the time.

You are always in another city →

You reply on planes and forget by landing. The good intention is real. The follow through is not.

They moved, not you →

Everything is where you left it except the person. That one is harder, because nothing in your day changed to remind you.

You are in your forties →

Nobody fell out. People had children, or moved for work, and the circle went quiet one person at a time.

You decided to be better at this →

You do not need a reason. You noticed you were letting people go by accident and would rather not.