I am a new college student who just finished my first semester. All things considered, it went very well. Made lots of friends, had a great time, but I wanted advice about what I should do with my dating life

My best friend is a girl who matches me extremely well. Dorky, cute, and the autism to my ADHD.

Over the course of the semester I realized I had feelings for her and even when I had tried to move on because I assumed she didn’t feel the same way.

When I did try to date somebody else, it quickly fell apart and I’ve now realized I self sabotaged the relationship because I was hung up on my friend still (bright side, still friends with the girl I tried to date, she’s sweet and I didn’t want to lead her on)

After a while, me and my friend had gotten extremely close, even getting a little physical at times, but nothing major. Most of our friends or people who meet us assume we are dating, and functionally we are. We have little dates, we hang out all the time, etc etc.

However a few nights ago I asked her about it. She does know I have feelings for her and she doesn’t feel the same way, and admits that she does love me as her best friend, finds me attractive, etc, but even she said she doesn’t know why she doesn’t want to date me, but she feels like she shouldn’t and believes if she does start to date me when she doesn’t have the feelings for it, it will not work and also ruin our friendship

It feels like our friendship is on a ticking clock, where I can’t wait around for her to make up her mind forever, but I don’t want to be with anybody else. She’s afraid of leading me on, and I believe she wants to want to date me, but just doesn’t

I’m afraid of losing her, both not having her as my partner, and of not having her as my friend. Some part of it even feels like both of us would be happy with each other, but it would be the end of our dating lives. We would never get to actually live and date and experience all the trials and heartbreak and people we could meet through dating if we just decide to end the game before it’s even begun

I’m genuinely at a loss. I don’t know what I can do, or what I should do, or what is the right thing to do. I’ve never had somebody who I felt this way about, and I don’t think I can keep being friends with her because my emotions will tear me up inside

Everything I can think of sounds wrong. I can’t date her, but if I move on to somebody else then I’m condemning whoever that is to be a second place, to be somebody I settled for. I don’t want to be alone, but I have nobody to be with. Maybe even just writing this out will help me, or maybe somebody can tell me what I need to hear