I really don't understand what or how this could have happened, but...I tried to load my game and found that it only gave me the option to start a new one. SO, I went looking for a solution, and found out that I may have a corrupted save file, so I followed the directions given to recover the file.
I went to C:/users/USERNAME/Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Saves
And?
The whole "Saves" folder is EMPTY. Nothing. I also checked other folders where things SHOULD have been saved, like "Saved Outfits" and "screenshots" and all the folders are empty. It's as if someone went through and wiped out EVERYTHING. How could this have happened?? Even in the instances in which people online described having weird program errors and system or game crashes, this didn't happen. They may have had corrupted files or something like that, but I couldn't find anyone who said that every single saved game had been wiped out and completely gone, with an empty "save" file folder.
I'm so upset. And I'm assuming there's no way to fix this, unless someone comes along and tells me there's a magical way to make my saves come back to my "Saves" folder.