How can I make sure that my friend actually cares about me?

Feeling as if a friend doesn’t care about you is a lonely feeling. There are some questions you could ask yourself: how do you generally feel with this friend? Do they reciprocate any effort to spend time together—to talk and share experiences? Are they respectful towards you? Feeling uncared for and neglected is awful and I’m sorry you even need to check if someone cares for you; in an ideal world whether someone cared would be obvious and there would be no obligation to make sure. Please remember, you deserve to have people in your life who respect and accept you as you are; people who are willing to spend time with you and love you without your needing to change anything or investigate their own behavior. Of course, it could be the case that the friend is going through a rough period in their life and isn’t able to lend much energy and time, but I am not aware of your entire situation. If it feels comfortable, you could even ask them how they feel about your friendship, and go from there.