Having an obsession separates you from the world.

X-Philes got to watch nine years of Mulder finding this out the hard way. Scully, Doggett and Reyes all got a crash course on it in seasons 8 and 9. When you have a singular obsession, even if the obsession itself is something easily understood, people begin to have a hard time understanding you. To an obsessed person, everything in life refers back to their obsession, in some way or another, even if they can't figure out why yet. To everyone outside the obsession, this is strange.

To everyone around the obsessed, he or she becomes a butt of jokes and a target of derision. Mulder chases his little green men with his badge and his gun, and because the rest of the FBI doesn't understand, they're frightened by it. They defend themselves by mocking, belittling, putting down. This doesn't make Mulder any worse, nor does it the others. But even insulated by his obsession, it would kill him if he minded.

I regret that I didn't notice this pattern before I, too, developed an obsession. Not that I regret it; it just bothers me that I wasn't watching closely enough. My obsession is not so easily explained as his, but it is no greater and no less for it. Like him, even if it isn't the only thing I think about, I am thinking about it all the time. It's always in the background, distracting me from other ideas and pursuits. I know that life is bigger than fashion, or x-files, or The X-Files, or any other obsession...but MY life is simply what I make of it.

Just don't try and tell me that while I'm hard at thought.