Friends?

How do I approach this?

I have this friend that I have lots of ups and downs with, and I've felt a really strong urge to be open and honest about how those downs feel. I promised someone I'm really close to that I'd be honest with her about how I feel about our friendship, but that's complicated for a lot of reasons.

This friend is someone who was there for me during really low parts of my life, and she's someone who I consider one of the closest people in my life--and one of a few people who have ever come close to being someone who I feel fits me as a person.

I see so many--almost an astounding amount--of parallels between us in terms of our struggles with mental health, our dynamics with others, and our perspective on relationships, and that makes it harder to even suggest that I have any right to be unhappy with part of our friendship.

What's been on my mind since the beginning of last week is the fact that I don't feel like she appreciates me, and the other week I explicitly reassured her that I don't doubt that she appreciates me, and she told me that was good, because she does, a lot.

I know that I told her that to avoid a disagreement with her. When we've disagreed on things in the past, even little things, she's been passive aggressive or jokingly hostile or just kinda rude about it. But I also lied to her, and it's really hard to go back on a lie after it's been shared.

And another part of it is that her passive aggressiveness and joking hostility and general rudeness is a really strong parallel between us.

I struggle a lot with anger management issues, and in the past year I've had a lot of angry outbursts and hurt a lot of people because of my anger. That's something I've been working on them for the past two months following a relationship that I made toxic and honestly abusive because of my anger, and I've had a lot of realizations about my anger. Those have been really difficult because the biggest among them, as far as when I'm typing this, is that... I don't like when people are mean, in passing or actively, but I expect that from everybody, so I'm angry and rude by default.

When she has let me be there for her when things are rough, I see a lot of what I struggle with reflected in hers. And as I've been analyzing and delving into the toxic parts of my behavior and even parts of my struggles that hurt others because they hurt so much for me, I keep seeing parts of myself in her and thinking, what would I have wanted someone to say to me when I felt like this? How do I show her I understand?

And my answer is always, I'd struggle to believe it, and I wouldn't want to change anything about myself or stop pitying myself because I knew I was hurting people when I felt and acted like that, but it never felt like anyone cared about me.

Also, yesterday, she told me that she hates me and thinks I'm a bad friend because all of her friends, myself included, haven't shown any interest in initiating conversations or hangouts with her, and that's made her feel really isolated and unwanted lately.

When she told me, I listened to her and reflected back what she was saying, and I apologized for not striking up conversations with her and for how she was feeling, and I tried to reassure her about understanding what she was feeling--because this is another thing I've felt and struggled with.

That event makes telling her about being unhappy in our friendship even more complicated. I know how this kind of conversation will feel to her, and I genuinely don't want to upset her, not just because I want to avoid disagreements with her, but also because I don't want to add to the stress she's feeling right now.

I know I'm not going to talk to her about this right now, but when do I? How do I? How do you even approach this kinda thing, considering how similar you are to the other person and how little you've done outside of this conversation to be active in the friendship?

I want to repair my friendship with her before I delve into that conversation, but it also can't fully heal without it.

Do I just let it come naturally? How do I prepare to have it?