From a comment, and it bears repeating to the rest of you who've been worried because I've been sounding completely off my rocker:

I'm OK. And I'll be OK. I'm just wondering what shape my mind's going to be in. Not as in intact or splattered, but square, circle, heart, star, triangle... because it's being put through some interesting gymnastics to wrap itself around something it should have realized a long time ago.

I've been through this sort of universe-spin before. It's always something I should have been bright enough to pick up on when I first realized it, or taken a clue, but for whatever reason I didn't notice and I went along on my merry little way doing things according to my outdated view of the universe, so now I have several years of mental re-filing to do, and incoherent blibbering and a great deal of uncertainty as to what I'm going to do with the new universe-view.

This has happened several times recently. I suspect that quite a few of my ancient (and erroneous) merry little assumptions are going to be challenged, so you may see quite a bit of me sounding like this. Maybe I'll even get used to it.

It's not a particularly scary mental state for me to be in, as much as I may seem utterly unhinged to the outsider. It's not so much unhinged, it's just that the hinges have been moved and I'm just now realizing it...