If this is in fact the case, that matter like planets only look like they are actively altering their momentum or trajectory based on a "gravitational pull", but in reality, from its perspective, it is moving 100% straight down the curvature of space... Does that mean, that the same holds true for near-Earth orbit?

Or when moving in a "straight" line, AROUND the curvature of Earth, you are in fact walking in a straight line, but space is bent so you can wind up back where you started again... Only from our perspective, it still seems like we walked in a straight line, only, we didn't, we walked around the planet. But, we were just following the curvature of space, as planets do when they revolve around the sun...

This relationship between matter, space, and gravity seems to be missing something.

When you look at 3-D models of gravitational revolutions, it implies that Earth would be pressing up against the bent fabric of space, which is bent by the concentration of matter at the center of the solar system. As if it were a fabric. But what if it is more like a high pressure region pressing up against a low pressure region, and not a fabric at all?

How does matter at the center of the planet interact with gravity? Where is the nexus of attraction and how does it form, and relate to the curvature of spacetime near the center of planetary bodies? Would the closest observable comparison we have be how asteroids loose in the medium of empty space interact? Is that almost analogous to the way matter would act near the core of a planet or a star with semi-fluid internals? It would be like the planet forming interactions between matter and gravity have never ceased?

I find it difficult to make sense of what happens at the center of planets and stars in relation to what is happening 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000, 10000000, etc Kilometers way from the core. I find it to be more intuitive to imagine space as a fluid medium with pressure regions relating to the amount of matter present, rather than imagining it as a fabric which bends and twists itself into unintuitive pretzels at the core of gravitational bodies.

Do I need to learn math to understand it better? Or can someone help me visualize what we know to be true, and differentiate what is fact and theory?

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