I have ADHD, which means my mind has never been very good at leaving things alone.

It catches on the smallest details, things most people probably wouldn’t give a second thought to, and before I know it I’ve spent an hour turning one little idea over and over in my head. It’s why I end up wondering why some places feel like home long after you’ve left them, why certain songs can carry entire years inside of them, or why a single photograph can make your chest ache in a way you can’t quite explain.

This time, it was titles.

Not the kind you put on a résumé or a business card, but the ones we give each other. Friend. Best friend. Brother. Sister. Family.

The more I thought about them, the more one word refused to leave me alone.

Friend.

Maybe it’s strange to spend this much time thinking about a single word. Then again, I’ve never really believed words were just words. They’ve always felt heavier than that to me. They carry memories. Promises. Expectations. Sometimes they carry grief. Sometimes they carry home. A word can become so intertwined with a person that hearing it years later still brings them to mind.

That’s why I think so much about them.

Lately, I’ve realized something that surprised me.

I think I’d rather be called a friend than a best friend.

Not because I don’t value the people closest to me. Quite the opposite, actually.

It’s because I’ve started wondering if we’ve made “best friend” so common that it’s begun to lose some of the weight it once had. It’s everywhere now. Captions, conversations, introductions, birthday posts. It has become the default way of telling someone they’re important to us. Maybe that’s enough for most people, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. This isn’t me saying people shouldn’t use it.

I just don’t think it’s ever been the word that meant the most to me.

I’ve never really understood why friendship became something we rank.

Maybe that’s human nature. We like putting things into neat little categories. First place. Second place. Best. Favorite. Closest. We do it with books, movies, songs, restaurants, photographs. We like lists because they make the world feel organized.

But people have never felt like lists to me.

Every friendship has asked something different of me. Every person has walked into my life carrying different joys, different wounds, different stories. Some friendships have been loud and adventurous. Others have been built almost entirely on quiet conversations and comfortable silence. Some lasted only a season but changed me forever. Others have quietly stretched across years, surviving distance, changing schedules, different versions of ourselves, and all the ordinary ways life slowly rearranges people.

How do you rank something like that?

How do you decide which friend mattered more?

The one who sat beside you during the darkest season of your life?

The one who reminds you to laugh when you’ve forgotten how?

The one who lives hundreds of miles away but still feels strangely close?

The one who understands your silence well enough to know it doesn’t always need to be filled?

I don’t think I could.

Maybe that’s why the word friend has always sounded complete to me. It has never felt like a title waiting for another word to make it more important.

If anything, I think we’ve forgotten how beautiful friendship actually is.

There are very few relationships where the only thing keeping two people together is their continued desire to know one another. Friendship is one of them, and I think that’s part of what makes it so extraordinary. Every day, without ever talking about it, we simply decide whether we’ll continue making room for another person in our lives.

That feels sacred to me.

Maybe it’s because I’ve watched how easily life changes people.

I’ve watched friends move away.

I’ve watched careers consume time that used to belong to conversations.

I’ve watched marriages, children, grief, illness, loss, and distance reshape lives in ways no one could have predicted.

I’ve learned that loving someone doesn’t guarantee you’ll always walk beside them. Sometimes life simply carries people in different directions, no matter how much they wish it wouldn’t.

Maybe that’s why I value the ones who continue choosing each other.

Not perfectly.

Not constantly.

Just… consistently.

I don’t think friendship is measured by how often you see each other or how quickly someone replies to a message. Life gets busy. People become overwhelmed. Seasons change. The older I get, the more grace I find myself wanting to give the people I love.

Instead, I think friendship is measured in quieter ways.

It’s remembering.

It’s continuing to reach for someone after months have slipped by.

It’s learning how someone changes without expecting them to stay exactly the same.

It’s making room for the person they’re becoming instead of mourning the person they used to be.

It’s believing a relationship is worth tending to, even when life doesn’t make it easy.

Those things don’t usually come with announcements.

Most people will never notice them.

But I think that’s where friendship quietly lives.

Maybe that’s why titles matter less to me now than they used to.

When I think about the people I treasure most, I don’t think about what we’ve called each other over the years. I think about the roads we’ve walked together. I think about the conversations that lasted long after the sun disappeared. I think about the moments one of us needed someone, and the other simply showed up. I think about all the ordinary days that seemed insignificant while we were living them, only to realize later they had become the memories we missed the most.

That’s what gives a title its weight.

Not the word itself.

Everything that came before it.

So if you ever introduce me as your friend, I don’t think I’ll hear something smaller than “best friend.”

I’ll hear years.

I’ll hear trust.

I’ll hear every ordinary Tuesday that slowly became a lifetime of knowing another human being.

Because to me, friendship has never been an ordinary thing.

It’s one person looking at another in a world where everyone is constantly changing, constantly moving, constantly leaving pieces of themselves behind, and quietly deciding,

“I’d still like to keep knowing you.”

I don’t know if there’s a greater compliment than that.