Thank you both for your responses. All of your advice is spot-on. Yes, I need to really limit my contact with her and impose proper boundaries. I was really surprised by HOW depressed I felt the other day, after my conversation with her. It was a totally disproportionate reaction, but her behavior that day was just sort of the latest irritation in a long series of small bullying from her. She's a nice person and I know she tries not to be annoying, but she's just a bad communicator with a difficult personality. I'm always sort of half-defending her in my head that she means well, but she's also this really destructive presence in my life.

Our relationship is just really complex. It has to do with laboratories, start-ups, subcontracts, etc. It would take too long to explain. Let's just say--she is not my supervisor in any way and I do not have to report to her. However, I cannot totally avoid her because there is some light overlap.

I'm going to stop going into the office, I can tell her I'm super busy when I'm there, and I'm definitely going to stop telling her what's going on, project-wise. My former boss is so disorganized that he lets her check his email for him so that nothing important gets missed. So I basically don't email him anymore anything I don't want her digging into.

Then unfortunately compassion becomes a problem. She's lonely. She'll want to zoom every week. I can say no once or twice, but then it gets hard and awkward and I don't know what to do. But I'll just take it one day at a time for now and not agonize about not being able to say no in three weeks.