[18M] 5 years with my gf[18F], she's going through a lot and "can't love me anymore" until she can love herself

(TLDR AT THE BOTTOM)

Not even sure how to write this.. Here goes nothing, I guess. (Sorry for the wall of text)

So, my girlfriend and I are in our 1st year of university. We've been together since the first year of highschool, and we've been going strong ever since (up until recently). We've never had any serious fights, and there has never been a point in our relationship where I felt like our love has wavered at all.

However, in January of this year, we hardly talked/saw each other for nearly the entire month. I was always asking to hang out, but she was (and is) very busy, which is understandable because I am too. But then, in the beginning of February, I finally realized: we hadn't seen each other in a month. Only when my best friend pointed this out did I start to think about how fucked up this was (and very uncharacteristic of our relationship). I started to get this really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that made me feel incredibly anxious and nauseous, and that feeling persisted for several days until she agreed to see me.

So she picked me up in her car, and immediately this sense of dread washed over me. We drove for a little bit and chatted, until she turned to me and said "I think we need to break up". I'm trying to make this sound as undramatic as possible, but my whole world came apart when I heard those words. We pulled off to a side street and she turned off the car, and I was literally lost for words. My mouth became really dry, and I couldn't speak to save my life.

I managed to get a word or two out before I started bawling my eyes out. Now, strangely, up until this moment, she had never seen me cry (for the entire 5 years), and she confessed that she never knew I had this kind of "raw emotion" inside me. She kept saying that she was blown away and that she didn't know I had this kind of "depth" to me, and that she really felt a lot closer to me after that. She cried a lot too, and we went back to her house and kind of held each other and bawled our eyes out until ~430 in the morning.

Now, the reasons for her trying to break things off are all things that have kind of developed over the last month or two, and she never really told me the extent of them until recently. In our "time apart" in January, she developed an eating disorder (she had been getting progressively skinnier over the last few months) and, now, at this point in time, she has lost about 30-35 pounds (and she was an average weight before, possibly even a little on the thin side). On top of that, she has been working full time and attending school, and school has always been relatively challenging for her. This has led to several emotional "meltdowns" as she is having a really tough time keeping up. That's a very brief summary of her problems, and in the next paragraph I'll describe why this lead to our breakup.

So, given all the information above, the reason she decided to break up with me is because she feels that she can't love someone else if she can't love herself. Which is understandable, even though it's impossibly difficult for me to deal with, I understand her reasoning. However, I kept repeating to her that I wanted to be there for her and help her with whatever she needed, no matter what happens. I'll skip over all the things I said to try and comfort her, just for the sake of simplicity.

Now, this happened about a week and a half ago. Ever since then, we've been FaceTiming every night (we used to do this every single night before the whole January incident happened), I've seen her several times, we've held and hugged each other, told each other that we love one another on numerous occasions, and she even came over late night on Valentine's day (I left her a bunch of flowers/chocolates in her bedroom) and we kissed.. As you can imagine, I'm getting incredibly mixed signals. She keeps saying that she doesn't know what she wants, but that what she did (saying we needed to break up) just "felt right", Despite her saying that we should break up, I don't feel like we DID break up. I still consider us together, because how the fuck else would you describe kissing, cuddling, constant communication and saying "I love you" every night? That sounds like a relationship to me..

Anyway, this last week or so, ever since we kissed on Valentine's Day, I started feeling better and better about our relationship. She seemed a lot happier and so did I. Until last night, when I asked her about the state of our relationship, and she said she didn't want to talk about it. I left it alone and had a really uneasy sleep. So I asked her again today, and it seems like we're back to square 1, where she's saying she doesn't know if she can love somebody else until she can love herself. I'm experiencing the heartbreak all over again, and I don't know what to do..

As far as I see it, and despite her objections about how she can't do either of these things, these are the two options I have come up with:

Option 1: She lets me help her through this, no matter how long it takes, and we continue to be a couple (even if she can't reciprocate the love I'm giving her). We're already practically doing this now, I just want some.. "formal" acknowledgement that she will try and make things work.

Option 2: This is the one thing neither of us wants, but I think it's the one we both need. Cut contact and commit to actually breaking up. That means no more seeing each other, no FaceTiming every night, no kissing, no hugging, etc etc.

Please help me.. I want her more than anything in the world.. I have no idea how to proceed or what to do, and every day I wake up feeling like my world is about to end..

TL;DR: Girlfriend is going through a lot. Doesn't think she can love me if she can't even love herself. She "broke up" with me. Despite that, we're still behaving as a couple would. She refuses to actually commit to the breakup and stop telling me she loves me, seeing me, talking to me, and even kissing/hugging me. I'm getting mixed signals because of all those things she/we keep doing.