So this friend in question i've known for a long time, like 15 years, we met in middle school. We were close in high school, drifted apart (she moved back to new york at one point to live with her bio mom), reconnected a few years back and have been in communication pretty much since. I've gone to visit twice. She says she wants to visit here but the stress of visiting everyone she kept in touch with would be too much. She has three kids. I have none. we both work a lot.

We communicate pretty much through text messaging, adult style wherein one will text the other every few weeks to see what's up. She has always been a dramatic person so the conversation invariably turns to what's going on in her life. Even when she specifically asks me what's up, if i try to bring up shit going on in my life she has nothing to say about it and uses it to switch the conversation back to herself. I've experimented before with randomly bringing up something going on and she either doesn't acknowledge or straight up ghosts the convo then comes back a week later with her own drama. She seems to live for the negativity in her life and accepts neither advice nor optimism, basically just vents one thing after another in her life. It's honestly kind of annoying and draining.

Basically, i need advice on how to steer the conversation away from the drama. I'm somewhat bad at social situations so i feel that it could be partly me. I quite like her as a person and don't want to just cut her out. Tbh i'm somewhat of a private person so i don't necessarily mind not getting to discuss my life, it's the constant drama and dwelling on stuff and being so negative about everything. I actually had to unfollow her on fb cause it's just a constant stream throughout the day

Tl;dr my friend only wants to talk about the bad stuff in her life and i need ideas on how to discuss other topics