How do you get out of recovery mode without restoring

Power the iMac off. Then reboot and immediately press the option+command+P+R keys until you hear the second startup chime — then release the keys and see if it boots normally, or Recovery. Also, reset the System Management Controller (SMC):

If it still goes to Recovery mode, reboot and press and hold the shift key until you see the progress bar. This will be Safe Boot Mode, and it will take longer to boot, unless your Mac ignores this too.

Your boot drive may either be toast, or corrupted to where the Mac flees to Recovery mode. Just let it boot into Recovery, and then Disk Utility First Aid on your startup drive. Provided you get a green result, exit Disk Utility and select Restart, using the ordinary startup drive as your choice.

Have you installed Linux or Windows directly to. your Mac drive recently?

In Recovery mode, the Mac will boot up to the mac OS Utilities panel. You run Disk Utility First Aid from there. Once you are done, you visit the menubar, select mac OS Utilities, and select Quit mac OS Utilities.

You will then get a sheet that asks: Are you sure you want to quit macOS Utilities? There, you can select the Choose Startup Disk…, or Restart button (to use the default boot drive). If you click the Choose Startup Disk button, a new panel appears with likely a single drive selection — by default Macintosh HD. Select it and choose Restart… . In either case, the Mac will make an effort to start from your default boot drive.

A reboot should return the Mac to normal operation and not delete anything.

You would have to quit out of Disk Utilities first, then quit out of macOS Utilities before the second paragraph in my last post raised the Are you sure dialog.

You are welcome.