Saved word document lost somehow

(I am posting this to "Macbook pro" because there doesn't seem to be a community relating to word)

So I just finished a history essay and I made sure to save before closing the document (word 2011). I then searched for the document to attach it to an email and could not find it anywhere.

Beginning to panic, I looked under "open recent" in word, and its name appeared there, but when I tried to open it, word told me that it could not be found.

Is there any way I could recover the doc???! What even happened????