So basically, i'm an idiot. There was something wrong with how I set up Icloud backup on my phone, so it hasn't backed up in over a year. So I have hundreds of photos from the past 54 weeks that only exist on my phone. I should've used some online thing to back them up. I just kept them on my phone until it was bloated with photos and had very little storage space, and as a result my phone has been acting weird. (In case you can't tell, i'm not very tech- savvy).
Yesterday, my phone was disabled for 60 seconds for no apparent reason. I hadn't made any failed attempts to unlock it.
So that all came to a head this afternoon, when my phone started acting even stranger than usual. It wouldn't open apps, most of my Imessage conversations only showed the latest messages, and I couldn't delete photos. I tried to delete some accidental screenshots, but they would just shift to the next one without being deleted or only give me the option to "cancel" when selected.
So I turned my phone off and on again.
When it came back on, it had a fairly innocuous message- "Iphone disabled- connect to Itunes". Note that i never made failed attempts to unlock it.
Now I know that this message is basically the worst message imaginable, and there's basically no way to get back into the phone that doesn't involve data erasure and a factory reset.
I have data in Photos and Notes that I really don't want to lose, and it's looking like there's no way not to lose them.