Vault is an interpretation of a folder. When you say that you deleted your vault, you either mean you deleted the folder you used to open as Obsidian vault, or you told Obsidian to no longer list that folder as a vault. Obsidian doesn’t give option to delete a folder that was opened as a vault.
Tough there is a way to achieve that if you try hard enough. I mean, if you are using nested vaults, and your Documents folder is a sub-folder in the other vault, you might have deleted it that way. Even then, Obsidian’s default behaviour for deleting a file or a folder is to move it to your local account’s trash folder.
Video showing the default file or folder deletion behaviour of Obsidian. (800 KB)
If you are sure that you didn’t delete your folder deliberately, but that it is really gone, maybe you have:
- Moved it into another folder.
Try searching for a file you know in your Documents folder to locate it. - Renamed the Documents folder.
Try same trick as above. - A program other than Obsidian messing around with your file system.
- Nested Obsidian vaults which are interfering with each other in a destructive manner.
In anyway, my best suggestion is to pull the latest version of your Documents folder from your backup. I hope you were making backups.