Hey girls, hoping for some advice on this rollercoaster I've held inside with a close friend I met in college.
I've been friends with her for 3 1/2 years now. While I'm not her best friend, we got pretty close in college. I always felt something between us, but it was never strong enough to manifest into anything. After I graduated a couple years ago, she attempted to keep in touch with me, but I was so busy and stressed out over finding a job, I didn't think to reciprocate it. I even forgot her birthday. After a few months, I finally got my life in order, but we had stopped talking as much over the summer.
About a year later, some friends and I went back to visit our college a couple times over a month and I met up with her. It was then that I realized just how much I missed her. I always cared about her as a close friend, but it was there that I realized how much I really wanted to be with her. Unfortunately for me, she was heading into her last semester of school, where she was overloaded with so much work that she became very stressed out. She's rarely available on weekends, and been obviously so stressed that she's been sick a few times.
I tried to get back to being close with her, but every time I called she would talk to me for a few minutes then have to go. Every time my friends and I went back to visit, there was only once or twice where she'd meet up with me because she said she hadn't seen other friends in a while (though I did get a weekend alone with her over spring break).
It kept killing me more and more, and I finally took the advice of others I had talked to and told her how I felt about her. I didn't get a chance to tell her in person, so I wrote it in a letter as apart of her birthday gift. I didn't hear anything back from her until I text messaged her a funny inside joke and got back "Hey, I got your mail. That was really sweet of you."
Obviously, this is about as unclear, middle-of-the-road as I could have gotten. So now I have no idea what to do. I was going to wait until after graduation to talk more about it with her, because I don't want to bring it up while she's stressed. But do I not try to contact her until then? Do I keep in contact with her, and if so, should I keep trying to get close to her or only small talk over text messages every once in a while?