Cannot ssh to machines I've previously connected to, can only ssh to new destinations

I used to have a public and private rsa key in my ~/.ssh directory which I needed to connect to one particular ssh server for work. Eventually, I no longer needed to connect to that cluster, so I did rm -rf in my ~/.ssh directory (big mistake apparently, I should've known!).

Now, any time I try using ssh to connect to ANY servers I've connected to in the past, I can't.. The shh command in the terminal just freezes forever.

I can connect to new ssh servers (ip addresses I've never connected to before) without a problem.

Any help please?

thank you