I tried to sync my Notes to iCloud and they disappeared.

I put everything important in my notes, including hours of writing and to-do lists. I tried to back the Notes app on my iPhone up to iCloud by clicking "Sync to iCloud" in Settings, so I could access Notes from my Mac.

All my notes are now gone. There is no "recently deleted" folder, they're just...gone. I can't restore any of them from a backup because I was trying to back them up in the first place.

Why, Apple? If I click "sync to iCloud" it means "back my current notes up to iCloud," not "delete everything". How do I get my notes back?!