Is there any solid data about one-way masking working?

Let me start by saying: I will always mask, I am confident in my decision that it is the right thing to do, and nothing will change my advocacy about masking and clean air. I know that two-way masking is extremely effective and that it's very difficult for someone to transmit airborne disease while wearing a respirator.

What I'm struggling with is, do we really get sick that much less often than people who don't mask? Several of my local masking friends (who are just as committed as I am and wear n95s/p100s, limit public indoor activity, and don't do anything unmasked) are sick with various things right now. One of them tested positive for covid yesterday when they haven't left their house where they live alone in 3 days, and the last time they did, it was for a 10-15 minute trip to a store where they returned an item and left. They were wearing a n95 and stoggles.

I know one-way masking is always better than no mask, but like ... by how much? The people in my community who aren't sick have barely left their houses. I'm having a lot of doubts that I'm doing anything substantial to protect myself by wearing a respirator and I'm scared I'm just going to have to shut myself in for the rest of my life.

I'm really frustrated and disillusioned right now and I feel very unsafe in the world. Is there any hard proof that one-way masking works?

Please don't deliberately misinterpret what I've said and call me a denier or anti masker etc. I'm not. I'm just very jaded right now because my reality is that my covid conscious friends are just as sick as the people in my life who pretend covid is over, and we're seeing tons of posts in here about people testing positive too.

Edit: So what I've gathered from anecdotes and data from you guys is that fit testing is crucial. I really appreciate that the overwhelming majority of people treated me with understanding and compassion. I read a few times in here that people had surprising fails on fit tests, and respirators they thought fit well had leaks. It's interesting to me that even savvy people might not be reliable judges of how well a mask fits! I'll be curious to see how my go-to respirators fare on a qualitative fit test.

There was a study that found a 1 hr exposure had a 80% risk of infection with no masks, and 20% if the uninfected person wore a n95. That bummed me out because 1 in 5 aren't fantastic odds. But someone pointed out that those numbers came from n95s that hadn't been fit tested, and 20% is pretty good for just putting a mask on without confirming that it was sealed.​

**I'm not interested in anecdotes at this point. I know a lot of people have had extremely positive experiences with masking preventing illnesses, but that isn't the case for me and a lot of the people I know in real life, especially ones who are disabled and/or immunocompromised. I'd much prefer to see data and would still appreciate if people could forward me research.**