MGmusic10 welcome to Apex :)
I had multi-year competitive experience, took a break, came to Apex, was "sweating" and stomped for a good part of first few seasons. Honestly only after 5+ seasons I started to feel a bit comfortable, less stressed during games etc. Apex is just combination of very cluttered screen, effects, bad audio (it used to be even worse) and hackers that will shoot you from 300m like nothing else matters.
Regarding matchmaking - bth level is nothing you should pay attention to. As you just said you have experience yet you are level 35, some players might have 0 gaming experience and just started their journey with Apex. So SBMM should take into account performance metrics not level.
Also already mentioned smurfs are ever so present in this game and matchmaking takes time to adjust (assumption) so you will have bad experience even on similar sub 50 level players.
Finally BR games are not suppose to be easy, it is competitive shooter :) and trust me if you complain about skill gap at level 35, wait till you get in ranked till Diamond 4 and face Master/Pred players and other hackers on game to game basis :) that will be "a lot more fun" :D
p.s. Unofficially it has been stated / leaked that this game does not have SBMM instead it is EBMM = basically game will give you some easy time and then just slap you hard for games after games after games :)