Where is my Favorites album?

I have an iPhone 15 plus with iOS 18.1 (i don't have the storage to update at the moment) and my favorites album is simply gone. I've checked the "customize appearance" button in the photos app and there isn't even an option to have it shown. I can still favorite photos, but they go nowhere. I had to make a personal album for them, which just seems ridiculous to me when they still let me favorite photos. I didn't have this problem with the big iOS 18 update, it seems to have happened randomly a couple weeks ago (after I had updated to iOS 18.1 but not immediately). Can this be solved by the 18.2 update, or do I need to contact Apple directly? Or is this some bigger issue?