Emergency! Deleted "Recents"... apparently that actually deletes the real files/apps?

I thought the Recents folder on Mac (latest Big Sur version that came out yesterday, I think 11.6.. on a M1 Mac mini )...

Anyway, I thought Recents were just links/aliases to the real apps... I thought you could clear recents out and it left the ACTUAL files alone... I thought it would just remove them from the recents folder but leave their home folders alone...

But when I cleared my recents folder, it deleted everything from iCloud!!!

So literally 30 seconds later I went to trash, command+a, and Restored everything ....

But it did not work properly.. documents ended up getting restored to random folders .. and I cannot be sure all of them are even there...

So, I have an external HD with Time Machine too...

I opened Time Machine and tried to restore my entire iCloud Drive, documents, desktop etc from the hour before I deleted my recents...

And now everything is a complete mess... I have folders showing up with Question Marks ... folders that are shaded out... all that sort of stuff...

Should I just delete my entire iCloud, documents, etc folders, and then start fresh with Time Machine?

Any tips you can give are appreciated, this is a huge mess right now and I am supposed fly out of town soon to start a new job... I need this fixed asap which is the reason my post may sound a little hysterical :)

Thanks!