AITA for wanting to break up with my boyfriend during a difficult time in his life?

My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over a year. Our relationship didn’t exactly start the way most people’s do.
He pursued me for a long time. He gave me a lot of attention, eventually told me he loved me, and kept trying to get closer to me. From the very beginning, I actually didn’t want a relationship with him. I told him to leave me alone, but he didn’t give up.
Sometimes I wonder if I actually fell in love with him or if I just fell in love with the attention he gave me.
At the beginning of our relationship, I was honestly pretty awful to him. I was very aggressive and constantly called him names, and I feel really ashamed of that now. At the time, I had already been seeing a therapist for about two years, although not consistently. I never really talked about relationships in therapy because I had never been in a serious relationship before. I’d only had a few little things with people.
Over the past year, I’ve changed a lot. I worked on myself, learned to control my anger, and became much more gentle. Regardless of how our relationship started, I became extremely attached to him. He became a huge part of my life, almost like a habit that was incredibly hard to break.
The problem is that his mental health has never been great.
Only a couple of months into our relationship, the little gifts, flowers, and constant attention started disappearing. I know relationships aren’t supposed to be fairy tales and that some people consider this completely normal, but affection and attention were really important to me, and they disappeared very suddenly.
After that, he seemed to fall into a depressive state, although he never admitted that he was depressed. He stayed like that for a very long time.
I tried my best to support him and be there for him. I suggested that he see a therapist, even if it was just to give it a try, but he always said therapy was pointless and basically nonsense.
At the same time, I wasn’t doing very well myself. I was trying my hardest to hold everything together, but my days were incredibly busy, I barely had any time for myself, and I felt like I had an enormous amount of pressure on me.
He never really seemed to get out of that state, and eventually I started feeling like I was the one carrying the relationship.
I took care of him and started feeling more like his mother than his girlfriend. I was doing so much for him and constantly trying to keep him okay.
You might wonder why I did all of that.
I genuinely wanted to help him. I thought that if I helped him get better, I would also be helping our relationship.
To be fair, he did give me flowers on holidays and compliment me sometimes. But he became so comfortable in our relationship that I eventually felt like I was carrying the entire relationship by myself.
Another issue was intimacy.
Over time, the way he behaved during intimacy started making me uncomfortable. I didn’t enjoy it anymore, and I didn’t really feel attracted to him or like I genuinely wanted to be intimate with him. I still had a desire for intimacy in general, but I didn’t have that “wow, I really want this” feeling with him.
If I didn’t want to do anything, he would roll his eyes and say it was fine. But whenever I suggested doing something together, he would sometimes say that he couldn’t do anything because he wanted intimacy and that I should just leave him alone.
I would often agree because I didn’t want him to be upset.
For the past few months, my own mental health has also been really bad, and I’m going to see a psychiatrist soon.
Recently, he jokingly asked me, “What if some of the problems you’re having right now are actually because of me?”
That really made me think. I awkwardly told him that I didn’t know.
Before we started dating, he wasn’t very social and mostly preferred staying at home. I’m the complete opposite — I’ve always loved spending time with people.
After we started dating, though, he tried to distance me from my friends because he wanted me to spend more time with him.
I also have a best friend I’ve known for five years. Even though my friend was in love with another girl, my boyfriend still didn’t want me talking to him and tried to stop me from spending time with him.
Yesterday, I asked my boyfriend to meet because I wanted to talk about breaking up.
This wasn’t actually the first time I had tried to have this conversation. The previous time, I felt so sorry for him and guilty about leaving him while he was going through such a difficult period that I backed out.
This time, though, I told him that I was exhausted. I told him that I didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore.
He started crying. I absolutely don’t judge him for crying, but it was incredibly difficult for me to watch. He ended up having a panic attack, and I stayed with him, helped him calm down, and supported him through it.
The whole conversation was incredibly painful.
And now I feel stuck.
I don’t feel like I can abandon someone while they’re going through such a difficult period. But what am I supposed to do if he never gets better?
For once, I want to choose myself.
At the same time, I feel horrible about ignoring his feelings and everything we’ve been through together. I can’t just erase all of our memories or stop caring about him overnight.
I’m also worried that he’ll try to convince me not to leave again. I can imagine him promising to change, showing me some improvements, and making me believe things will finally be different — only for him to eventually become comfortable again and for everything to go back to the way it was.
This has happened so many times before. Whenever I tried to talk about things that needed to change, he would become extremely emotional, promise to do better, and I would stay because I felt guilty.
After we finally broke up, I completely broke down and cried like a child.
I don’t know what to do now.
How do I actually let someone go when I still care about them?
Is there a chance he’ll keep trying to contact me and convince me to come back?
And most importantly, AITA for wanting to leave this relationship, even though he’s going through such a difficult time?