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Another thought as someone explained it to me--
We tend to understand complex scientific subjects by anaolgy. For instance, we can think of molecules of gas as very small balls all bouncing around with each other. By and large, this use of subrelativistic Newtonian macroscopic physics to understand other concepts works for most situations (because most situations are subrelativistic and macroscopic). It is very hard for our brains, which have spent 100% of their time observing and interacting in this world to really get other situations. You may understand them intellectually, but that understanding is probably just using more and more complicated analogies to things that you understand. For example, you can learn the equations for relativity and "understand" that mass increases and length contracts, but you are probably still thinking about weight being added and rulers being shrunk. You don't really get what is happening at relativistic velocities because it is something unlike anything that you have EVER perceived.
It's like being able to understand a foreign langauge by converting it to English in your head vs. actually being able to think in that language. You can discuss concepts competently and have a sense of what is going on with either, but you don't really get it until you are doing the latter.
When it comes to quantnum mechanics, as I understand it, the fundamental nature of fundamental particles is that they are uncertain. How can that be? Doesn't everything have to exist in a particular time or place, even if we cannot measure it? The short answer is NO. Everything that you have ever known must exist in a particular time or place. But these particles are like nothing that you have ever known, and there is simply no easy way (i.e. via analogy to something familiar) to explain what they are.
None of which answers your question, but some of which may help you understand from where the frustration is coming.
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