Photos NOT on iCloud after purchasing more storage and uploading!

I was deciding whether to go with DropBox or iCloud for storage.. man how I wish I would have gone with Dropbox. OR, this would be novel, if iCloud would have been more forthright with the fact that they don't actually store your pictures! I have just learned from this forum that they delete them after 30 days, but I uploaded all my pictures from my phone to the cloud less than 30 days ago, and can't see ANY OF THEM. Forgive me for being emotional, but I had some pictures on there that were really special! I only did this so I could gain back the storage capacity on my iPhone, but I never would have done it if I thought they weren't going to actually be in iCloud like Apple really did lead me to believe. Every step of the way through the uploading process assured me they would be there. I logon to view them, and just see instructions about how to use it, but my pictures are nowhere to be found. Any advice? Any chance I can retrieve them? Why is it so misleading?