I [19m] started talking to my childhood friend/crush [19f] again, but I’m feeling the anxiety and guilt that led to her cutting me off build up again. Help! (also Aspergers’)

Its like this: long story short, she ghosted me 2-3 years ago. I know she was going through a bad period with her mental health, but I was blocked almost immediately as the school year ended.

This emotionally destroyed me for years, to the point I tried to leave the country for education abroad to escape myself and try and find if I was an irredeemable leech on the health of loved ones but Covid scuppered my plans. I cannot be more emphatic by how much ghosting stung, mostly because I still can’t be certain exactly why she did it but the only thing I am sure of is that I was the problem.

I decided to make contact again by sending a literal letter in the mail to ask for a book back that I lent her once, but mostly as a front to say that I wanted something to be sure if there was animosity or even a  return of the book without response, which would be enough to prove I could move on with my life.

In the intermediary time between sending that message and her receiving it, I ran into her as a cashier for a local grocery shop. I had been fairly shut indoors following Covid but being able to talk to her amicably again was as relieving as it was surprising. I had never seen her in person since I had been blocked, and I have memories of quite literally looking over my shoulder terrified I might meet her but now that she was there in front of me I felt like a weight had been lifted.

Amazingly, she actually did respond and went beyond any expectation to restore diplomatic channels when she received the mail, telling me that there was no animosity felt (which was one of my hopes for the message) and that she’d send the book shortly.

This is when things take a bit of a downturn.
I continued to text her, even after sending a text that kind of a final farewell (which in a moment of weakness I wrote “I love you” at the end which feels like such a fucking mistake that I’m still cringing about having sent).

The conversation over text was fine, but I’m worried now because I’m starting that anxiety and regret of “cold feet”, wondering about what went wrong in the first place.

She’s usually slow to respond to texts (which takes her days at a time sometimes), so in that time I’m left confused trying to figure out why she ghosted me. For one point, we have gone out on ‘dates’ before but we’ve never got as far as kissing frankly because I didn’t want to compromise our friendship and I don’t think she wanted to either. I did love her, but the risk involved left a fear in me that I couldn’t make a move at all and that fear has never left.

I can feel myself circling the hole of anxiety and regret that led me into becoming such a burden for her, and I don’t know if she wants me to stop contacting her or if she actually likes texting me. It feels like I can’t get through to her, that communication is at a stunted position where the social boundary between us is stuck

The longer I talk to her without getting definitive answers about how she’s felt about everything that happened the more doubt that seeps in. I want to be able to get through to her, but I’m so lost how to do it. I also am unsure if she’s intentionally keeping me a certain emotional distance from her because she doesn’t want us to thread that path again.

I think telling her I love her has created an inability to pursue a normal platonic relationship, especially if it seems like she is deliberately avoiding talking about it.

Another issue is that she’s leaving the country herself soon, so I’m running out of time to do anything

Should I really let go? For good? Like I originally wanted to when I tried to make contact?

Note I have Aspergers’/on the ASD spectrum, which has led me to missed a lot of social cues and important information in the past and is probably a proponent for why I have a limited social circle (which made the ghosting hurt a lot more).

TL;DR – I met my childhood friend again who ghosted me years ago, I am feeling anxiety again but also am unsure if I can be friends or more with her again especially with intermittent communication that was a trademark of our old friendship. Really need help with this, I don’t know how to read the situation