Am I just stupid? I think I may have totally screwed up

When I put the motor back together. The bottom end was not pulled apart; just heads, Cam, lifters, rockers, and intake (obviously). When I installed the Cam, I followed the instructions from comp cams to the "T" and everything seemed to be fine. After some electrical garbage the A-team from the forum helped me figure out, it started up just fine. It stinks to high heaven, burns the eyes, garage smells like there is a ton of gas in the exhaust.

So I changed out a bad EGR, and restarted, but it was running really rough. I put a timing gun on it (yes, using the #1 cyl) and I could not see the timing marks. (They were on the opposite side of the balancer??? WTF

I think I have what I thought was TDC on the top of #1's exhaust stroke instead? Is that possible and it would still run?

I pulled the valve cover (flippin PITA), and indeed, the top of the compression stroke puts the timing marks on exact opposite side from where it should be.

How the heck would the car run like that, and pretty powerful at that????

It didn't run rough. It actually drove really nice, had a loapey idle (from the cam). It just smelled really bad. That's when I discovered that the MAF sensor was bad. I replaced it and thought it was best check the distributor to start refining the trouble checklist and to make sure everything was alright. Thats when I discovered that the timing marks were on the opposite side. I seriously remember the first time around that the timing was right on 12*, and that when I put the cam in it was set at 4* initial???

I couldn't sleep thinking that I had pulled a bonehead move and put the timing gun pickup on the wrong wire, but alas, the results were the same.

Where do I go from here?