In love with my best friend. What should I do?

Dear all,

Tonight I'm having one of "these" nights again and I decided to join the forum and ask for your help. So this is my (complicated) story:

I have been in love with my best friend for the last 5 years. I am a guy, she is a girl. This was a love from the first sight feeling for me. I met this girl 5 years ago, in high school. We started talking and talking more, started to get knowing each other better. I did not have any other relationships before that time, so she was my first big love. Things should be very simple in love, but people tend to make them complicated. This is exactly what I did. I never found the courage to ask her out in the beginning, perhaps this was due to "the fear" of asking out a girl in the first time. She found a boyfriend the same year.

That did not stop me from talking to her though. We talked with each other almost every day, about daily things, such as school, to most complex things teenagers tend to talk about. I loved her more and more every day. I loved her smile, her voice, her movements, everything. I loved her soul. Her feelings were not reciprocal exactly: she never showed any sign of love for me apart from friendship. I was her best friend, not one of the common best friends that are best-friends just because of similar hobbies etc. I was a special friend for her too, I was like her brother. She knew she could share concerns with me like she would do with her mother.

At that point, I made a terrible mistake which I still regret even today. My family started believing that me and her were in a relationship due to the way I talked about her and the time we spent together. I don't know exactly why, but I let them believe it. I had built an utterly imaginary relationship with my best friend, without telling her. I lived in a lie for 1.5 whole year.

Having finished high-school, we both went to different universities. We kept talking like we always did, she still was my best friend. Last year, during holidays, I finally found the courage to tell her about my lie to my family. I told her that I used to like her when I first met her and how this little lie began and expanded and that I only had friend feelings for her anymore. She reacted positively. She said that what I did was a product of love and not a product of evil. We kept talking as regularly from that point on. She had broken up with her boyfriend but she found a new one a few months later.

During the last year, I decided to stop talking to her so often. We would still exchange "snaps" or little comments on photos etc. but I avoided talking to her as I used to in the past. This did me good, I kind of put her out of my mind and had some personal love experiences, not an important relationship but I "grew up" in a way. Last week, we finally talked again after a 5 months non-talking stop. The amazing thing is that it was still like it used to: true, deep and emotional talking with her. After all this, and it still was the same. She also said that she had been planning to come and make a suprise to me for my birthday the upcoming week but she was informed that I would not be there. I didn't ask her anything about her boyfriend, whether they were still together or not.

Since that moment, my heart has started again beating in the same way for her like it used to 5 years ago and since then. I almost cannot sleep, I don't want to eat and I don't know what to do. I cannot talk to any of my friends or my family to discuss all this due to my stupid lie I mentioned above and due to not having told them anything about my feelings for her during all this time.

I am desperate to hear your comments and thoughts about my story. What should I do? Please talk to me with your heart, as I have done with you.