Dealing with affectionate emotions

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Not really sure where this goes.

Yeah the title sounds weird but let me explain. I like this girl who is very neurotypical... possibly because she is nice to me and yet so different from me. And she was around me at the peak of some of my worst aspie social behaviors... but even worse behavior because I was also dealing with a lot of psychological problems at the time.

The reason I like her is because throughout all this, she has remained interested in talking to me and friendly... and although she never calls me or sends me emails (I no longer do either (except one very recently)... in the past those have been terribly awkward between us), whenever she sees me she will come over and say hi. During one of these brief encounters (she only sees me before this one class because I don't go on to her part (the non-engineering side) of campus very much) she asked my how I had been and I told her about my high functioning autism, and about my problems with stress and high blood pressure, but that I was lucky I was still able to be in school. She seemed very sympathetic and patted me on the arm. The next time she saw me she did this as again.

Now I can't get her out of my head, and I have all these obsessive compulsive thoughts about "fixing" our friendship and explaining exactly what caused my behavior... in addition to fantasizing about actually dating her. But this isn't going to happen because of our problems communicating and in addition she is much too cute for me, and because I am way too busy with school.

These thoughts about her have been so distracting I wrote a massive 1210 word email explaining my condition and the other psychological problems I've been going through that caused me to behave the way I did around her (this was to alleviate the worry about whether to talk to her and supposed "fix" any bad feelings she might have had about my behavior) (she hasn't responded yet and I doubt she'll have the attention span to read something like that ). I felt better after this, but I was just wondering is this the right way to deal with it?

Basically: Do you find that you get over people better if you just avoid them or if you just deal with your feelings and possibly turn them into a friendship?

1: I just avoid her. (this will make me feel guilty because she is so nice)
2: I face this and just deal with it like normal person, and possibly be her friend. (this would also give me some more practice talking to neurotypicals but the danger is with obsessive thoughts coming back because of her friendliness)
3: I tell her about my feelings and that way they will be off my chest and then she can become uncomfortable and avoid me. (this would be rather awkward)

I don't care about the fact that she is cute, but she is too darn nice, this wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for that
I know there are no easy answers but thought that other people's comments might get my mind away from her and at least on to the technicalities of this problem.

If you can manage item 2 that you list, go for it. I've been where you are before and was feeling and wondering very like you are now. You are right to worry that #3 might mess things up. If she's up for it in being your friend, she will let you know, but if she is not, then overloading her could be too much for her. As an NT, she probably will be able to tell your feelings better than you can tell hers--- at least, in my case, I was told it was obvious! <:-\ I do wish you luck.

Don't avoid her, I've tried doing it before and all it does is make you more conscious about not being with her. I'd also say 2), because 3) might make you want to kick yourself afterwards if you realize you didn't really want to do it. And as for obsessiveness, I suffered from that a lot and I've come to realize that YOU yourself have to believe that there are many more girls out there like her or even better and that the reason you're not with her is because things wouldn't be right with her (if you think logically). Try and think of all of the traits you like in her; e.g. 'she's good looking' ---> 'there are plenty of good looking girls, 'she's understanding/caring' ---> 'many girls are understanding/caring'. Hopefully if you have a bit of faith in that reasoning you won't feel as obsessed. I always hear people saying that relationships happen naturally so don't worry too much. Also, I salute you for being one of those guys who also cares about girls' personalities If only all those ice queens realized that when they hit 40, no one will be interested in them anymore