Forum thread situation leads to potential AS reveal

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Today was the kind of day when all my faults came to the forefront. It's not that anything happened on purpose, but more like I ended up in an accidental situation and didn't handle it as well as I could have. My friend and I have a unique long distant friendship, meaning it's hard to see her in person, and sometimes I have issues with communication or being able to simply ask about things. This trait put me in an unusual situation when I stumbled upon a forum thread of hers by complete, pure, simple accident.

I am a curious person, and I like to know things about her. She is not a very forthcoming person and sometimes it's hard to get information. However, due to a bunch of self-esteem issues that I won't go into, I find it hard to simply ask her, because I feel like I'm invading her life/should leave her alone/don't deserve her/etc. She has a hobby that she recently introduced me to, and I was doing some research on it when I found her thread. I wasn't even looking for her specifically when I stumbled on it.

You can't get more accidental than that, but when I found the thread, I immediately felt as though I had overstepped a boundary. I asked myself, 'Should I have seen this?' I almost wished I could take it back and un-find it. It wasn't a thread she had told me about, I wasn't even aware that she was on any internet forums, so I felt that maybe it was something she didn't want me to necessarily know about. And of course, being the way I am, the catastrophic thinking ensued.

These were my thoughts:
On one hand, the information is public, meaning anyone can find it. I just happened to see it because of my now mutual interest in her hobby.
On the other, I was already feeling cautious because in the past I already found out other stuff relating to her hobby (instagram pages etc) and I was scared that if she found out, she would think I was stalking her or something crazy like that.
I wasn't sure whether or not it was better to be completely open and be like, 'Oh by the way I found your forum thread.' Or if I should just leave it alone and let her get on with her business and just never say anything. But the idea of telling her made me panic and I stalled and said nothing.

I continued to silently follow her on the forum for a few weeks. But I knew that eventually I was going to have to say something, because I felt as though, by keeping quiet, I was following her behind her back, which made me very uneasy.

Today I finally told her how I had been feeling. I think she thinks I was snooping around a little bit, but also said I should just ask her directly if I want to know something. She's said this before, but I find it really hard. She asked me if I felt as though I had to hold back for some reason. And the thing is, I do. Not because of anything that she did, but because of my own insecurities, paranoia, bad thoughts, etc. I didn't tell her that, but said that I didn't want to be invasive and wasn't trying to be deliberately weird.

What all this is leading up to, is the idea that I might eventually decide to tell her about AS, if only so that she understands why I act so strangely sometimes. She said I'm entitled to my quirks, that she's there for me, that my negative traits don't matter in the light of all the good ones (something I find hard to believe)...basically, she is like, the nicest person ever, which is both incredibly sweet and made me feel really guilty. I feel so bad that I have dragged her down into my negative self-esteem and bad thoughts, and yet for some reason she doesn't seem to mind.

Wow this whole thing seems so ridiculous when I read it back.

Interesting situation.
I kinda think what I'd do is say to her that her understanding and support is much appreciated, along with, "Oh, and by the way, if I ever seem to do really weird things, this might be why ..."

I did mention that there were reasons behind it and things that I might tell her eventually. And added that I can be really bad in certain social situations.