iCloud deleted all of my data a couple of hours after purchasing 2TB and it is not in recoverable data/restore

Sad and worried. This is the first time I have required any iCloud assistance since I purchased my first Apple product in 2005, so I’m not a tech noob.

Today I purchased an additional 2TB of iCloud storage because my 5GB of iCloud, iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air were all full. As usual, my documents were moved from my MacBook Air (in the past I’ve also had a Pro) to the iCloud. I saw the transfer, I organized the files on iCloud. I deleted documents from my MacBook Air to free up the space that needed freeing and left my computer for about three hours.

I returned to iCloud to share a folder with my friend and EVERYTHING important that I had just saved in iCloud was gone. I called Apple support. The first call dropped and the second call said that the documents were nowhere and that he could not help me. He had access to my computer remotely and asked me to go to the restore files and trash folder. I didn’t visit either of these folders today. My trash folder somehow had documents from 2003 (not sure how), but nothing since 2016. I are even docs that say they’re from 1979, and I was born several years later. How is this even possible?! I’d never leave documents from years ago and delete more recent documents.

As you can imagine, I’m fairly upset, but I feel there has to be some background way of recovering my documents from iCloud in some way. One of the reasons I never purchased iCloud was because of this fear, and today it became a reality.

Short question: can someone please help me find documents that were deleted from iCloud and somehow deleted from all recoverable locations such as restore files and my trash can.

Thank you in advance for your help.