I was prompted to sign up instead of signing in - where did my account go?

I saw someone else on this forum had a similar issue, but when I got on my computer today, I got a notification that Dropbox wanted to re-log me into my account. I'd just accessed my account a week ago and have had this account for several years, but when I went to login it made me create a new account and all of my files had disappeared. I doubled checked I logged into the right email and I hadn't received any email informing me of a sort of account termination, so I'm very confused as to what is going on. On top of it all, it's clear from the other person I saw who had a similar issue to this in the Community wasn't able to resolve their issue from a simple reply to their post, but had to be directly dealt with an email correspondence. Which, incredibly inconveniently and frustratingly, is not something I can directly pursue. Since reaching out via email or chat to a Dropbox representative is not something offered to people who don't have a paid plan, apparently.