If one thing stays with you

Let it be this.

Alone is the count and lonely is the gap, and they are different. The gap makes you read people more harshly than they deserve, which makes you harder to reach, which widens the gap, and that loop runs without anyone in your life being unkind. The ummah described in the Qur'an is an obligation on a community, so a cold room is not a verdict on you.

And the unit is two. Not forty. Two people, more than once, around something to do.