Inventory disappeared when force-quitting after game froze

Hi! So, my game froze after I hit the esc button and I wasn't sure what to do. I looked up if the game would auto save and the answer seems to be yes. I figured it would be okay to close out of the game and just deal with losing a few minutes or so. I closed out of Minecraft by right clicking the app on the hotbar and clicking close window. When I reloaded the game, everything from my inventory was gone. I again looked this up and some people said to exit without saving then reload and it would be fixed. I tried this a few times and my inventory is still completely empty.