When Paradise Becomes Dark

Yesterday morning I did two things I shouldn't have.  I sat and listened to Lana Del Rey and then went through a big bag of my things that had come from my now former boyfriend's apartment.  I had been avoiding both of those things specifically because Lana Del Rey's music was our thing - no one would understand and we don't care - and the bag contained items meant for no one but him, aside from a random assortment of clothes and toiletries I kept there.
I sobbed my eyes out on my bedroom floor for the millionth time as Lana's voice floated from the speakers, setting my guts on fire because my boyfriend, the man I loved, has ripped out my heart, torn it apart, and dropped it at my feet.  It's still lying there and it's starting to rot.  I'm tired of looking at it but I don't have the energy to pick it up and put it back where it belongs.  No one wants it anyway, not even me.
I need answers.
Like how I could start to believe that our relationship was it, how it was the last one I ever wanted to be in when he wasn't feeling the same way.
Like how someone can shut their emotions down and wall up their heart, and even after two years of building trust and a bond with me that no one on the outside could have broken, still not let me in.  How he told me I was perfect, I was the most amazing girlfriend, I was beautiful and just enough crazy for him, that I've done nothing wrong at all, and in the same breath tell me that right he can't give me what I need right now, so he had to let me go.
I don't fucking understand.
I'm 30 years old.  I've grown exponentially over the last five years or so.  I can confidently say that at this point I know what I want out of a relationship and I know what I need.  Someone can tell me what they think I need, but they don't know.  What I need is something I have lost, and it is him.  What I need is everything he gave me - happiness and laughter, silly inside jokes, safety and comfort, mind-blowing, name-forgetting orgasms, a sense of peace, loads of self-confidence.  I need it back, because without all of that, without him, I am empty.  Completely empty.
He says not being able to love me right now is killing him.  Well it fucking better, because I am already dead.  Our relationship had been nothing but a natural progression, so I wasn't worried about him taking his time.  I was happy to give it to him.  But he realized he was being unfair to me and....and it just sucks.  I have no control over this.
He says time and space is what he needs and I am giving that to him, as much as it is killing me.  It's killing me to wonder where he is and what he's doing, to wonder if he has found solace in someone else's arms, not knowing what's going to happen to us.  Every day is a struggle.
Before I left his house the night he ended our relationship, as I stood at the top of the stairs with tears running down my cheeks, I said the three little words that carry the weight of the world, because I knew if I didn't, I'd regret it.
"Whether you want to hear this or not, whether you can accept it or not, I love you.  I never dreamed I'd be saying it under these circumstances, but I have to, and you have to hear it.  I love you."
And then his tears started.

I thought I knew what heartbreak was.  I thought I knew how bad it hurt.  I had no fucking idea.