I (22M) think this girl (24F) is just using me?

I haven’t been in a relationship in a looong time. The last time I tried was in high school and I found out she was cheating when she stopped responding to my messages suddenly and I found her on social media laid up with another man. Since then, I’ve just been really low key, focusing on school, hobbies and my eventual career. I recently graduated from college and landed a pretty nice job in the Film industry in December.

A few weeks later, I get a message on LinkedIn our of all places from a random girl interested in my field, so we email back and forth while she asks me questions about the job and what it’s like being there, as she hates her job as an assistant at some local company. I was still relatively new so I didn’t have much to offer, but then she asks if it’s okay if we could exchange #s to talk more.

She goes ghost then about a month later, hits me up out of the blue and asks me about how things are going with my career. I’m killing it and tell her about all the exciting things I’m about to be involved in and she seems genuinely excited, and says that she wants me to keep her updated while using emojis like “???” and asking about meeting up.

We talk on the phone (call/text) almost everyday for a good 3 weeks about everything. She responds almost instantly and is usually the first (and only one lol) that interacts with every single thing I post on Instagram (which she asked for).

COVID hits. I lose my job. I hit her up and tell her “hey, looks like I’m losing my job because of COVID, sucks because all of my plans are on hold right now.” She responds with “Oh no that’s horrible… sorry. Do you know what’s gonna happen next?” And I tell her that im honestly unsure of if I’ll ever get that job back.

THIS is when she starts acting different. She starts responding to my messages hours later in short phrases like “wow”, “Idk”, or “that’s great.” Whereas before it would’ve been something like “That’s amazing!! ??” or lots of random memes and jokes back and forth. The next few weeks, she stopped interacting with all of my stuff on Instagram, and the time it took her to respond got longer and longer.

It began to feel like I was texting a robot, so I just stopped texting her all together and honestly it hurts because imagine texting someone every day for hours on end just for it to come to a halt.

I just want to know if I’m reading the situation properly and correctly assuming that she was never interested in me, but only my career and the potential I had to grow in the industry and now that my career is on pause atm, she couldn’t care less about me as a person. I’m pretty confident I’m about to get my job back, so when I do, should I just ignore her completely if she tries to come back into my life? Any insight would be greatly appreciated, because I’m bummed. It already is hard as is to meet a great girl in my area so I’m feeling down lol.

TLDR: I get an awesome job, meet girl in my area on LinkedIn that is excited for me and my career growth. Text and call everyday talking about random stuff and she seems genuinely interested. COVID hits, I lose job, girl essentially goes ghost.