Authors Note/Preface

Before you guys start reading this, I will say that this is probably in the running for the longest author's note ever. There is a TL;DR at the end for people who don't want to read everything I have to say, so there's that. If you want to read all of this to get a full idea of what happened with myself and all of my stories, then buckle up, because boy do I have a tale for you.

First of all, in case anyone is concerned, I am fine. I'm actually better off than I probably have ever been, but I'll get to that later. It didn't occur to me when I abruptly left without any kind of announcement/warning that some people might've been concerned, and for that I sincerely apologize.

So basically, without diving into every single detail of my personal life, in March of 2021 when I left I was not doing so hot, mentally speaking. I've struggled with mental illness my entire life, but that was a particularly low point. Throughout my life I would have these times where I would get super stressed, and agitated, and anxious that would last a couple of days or so, and I thought it was just stress. I knew I probably had some kind of anxiety issue, but it never seemed like it was anything that needed to be addressed by a professional.

However, something that I thought was just a little anxious, quirky personality trait of mine was actually me having stress-induced panic attacks. At least that's what my therapist thinks it is. Yes, I am very pleased to announce that I have discovered this amazing thing called 'therapy' (I love it, I would absolutely recommend it for everyone)

I have always been the type of person that likes to do as much as they possibly can at all times. I love having to-do lists, I love being busy. I love pushing myself, but it never occurred to me that I might be pushing myself too much. It also never occurred to me that I might be keeping myself so busy to distract from my mental health.

That leads me to what you all came here for: the JAG Fanfiction that I wrote. When the pandemic started, I was at home like 99.9999% of the rest of the world. I didn't have nearly as many distractions as I usually had, so I was left wondering what I could do to occupy my time.

For some reason, I thought to myself, "You remember that one show about the…Navy JAG officers that you never really watched in its entirety? Yeah, you should rewatch that."

So, I did. Then I thought, "I wonder if there's any Fanfiction for this show?" And, holy shit, believe it or, there was. Then I remembered, "Hey…I enjoy writing….and I need something to distract myself from this global pandemic."

That's how I started writing The Case, and all the other fanfictions I published on here. If I was stressed, I would just turn my brain off and write some Harm and Mac fluff, which I thought was working for me. I thought it was a healthy coping mechanism. But, ignoring something doesn't make it go away; this includes mental health/mental illness.

By using all of these distractions, I wasn't making myself better, I was just ignoring the problem. It eventually got to a point where I couldn't ignore the problem anymore, and I had to do something about it. I wanted to get better, not just temporarily, but long-term. That meant that I had to step away from the world of to focus on my life outside of it.

The reason why I deleted all of my stories rather than just leaving them up and returning to them when I was ready is….something I can't really explain. I wasn't really in the most stable, rational headspace when I did it, but I think my thought process was that, as long as the stories were still up, I still would've kept adding to them as I always did and would've continued to ignore my mind, which was something I couldn't do anymore.

I'm not going to ask you guys to understand, because I don't really understand myself. Over the past year or so, I've thought back to doing that and I'd think to myself, "What was I thinking? What was I trying to accomplish with that? Did I think not writing Fanfiction anymore was the key to getting mentally healthy?"

But alas, the mind is a fickle thing.

I understand if you guys were upset with me and still are, I really do. I am sorry, because I know that taking away my stories after sharing them with all of you for almost a year was rather selfish of me, but I don't exactly regret doing it, per say. At that moment, I needed to take care of myself, and I was doing what I thought I needed to do in order to accomplish that. After such a long time of not taking care of myself, I'm not regretting finally doing it.

So yeah, that's that.

But I am sorry, I really do mean that because, I don't want it to seem like writing and uploading these stories didn't matter. Even if it didn't really matter to you guys, I've always loved writing, and The Case was the first creative thing I'd written in a very long time. I know this seems dumb to say, but I was so nervous to upload it. So, so incredibly nervous. I was thinking to myself, "What if these strangers on the internet don't like it? What if these strangers on the internet who also happen to be in the same Fanfiction forum as me judge me?"

Well, I can't speak for every single person who read my stories, but I'm pretty sure a lot of you liked them, and I want to thank you guys for that. To every single person that favorited, followed, reviewed, and read my stories, I want to extend my sincerest thank you. Your support meant so much to me.

Also, I had so much fun writing those stories, especially The Case. The Case was how I kept myself sane during the first six months or so of the pandemic. When I started thinking about whether or not I should come back here, finishing The Case was my main motivation. The Case was about Harm and Mac having a baby, but in a weird way it was my baby, in a creative way, and I found myself wanting to see it through to the end. It's by far the longest thing I've ever written, and I had fifty-seven of the sixty-something chapters already written when I left. So, I figured….why not finish what I had started?

I'm not going to make any guarantees that I'll get around to uploading the rest of my stories that I had published on here, but I will upload all of The Case - eventually. I'm not guaranteeing weekly updates like I used to do, but I have the entire story finished so everything just needs to be edited and revised. I thought about uploading all of this together in one fell swoop but…to my knowledge I stopped updating about thirty-ish chapters in and I don't want to edit thirty more chapters all in one sitting. Plus some chapters require author's notes explaining my thoughts/inspiration behind them. So I'll be updating the rest of the chapters as I edit them over the coming weeks.

I just wanted to, once again, thank you guys for sticking with The Case, and continuing to stick with it through this…phase 2? I guess you could call it that.

If you stuck around to read all of this, thank you. I didn't mean to dump all of my personal issues out when pretty much all of you came here just to read some JAG Fanfiction. I just felt like some explanation was deserved in the event that I decided to return - which, I guess if you're reading this, I have decided to. It didn't feel right to just swoop back in after completely disappearing for almost two years and act like nothing happened.

There's so much more I wish I could say and explain, but this author's note has gotten long enough, so I guess I'll cut it off here. In conclusion, it's been a rough past few months, but I finally feel like I'm on the other side of what I was going through, and I feel like it's time for a fresh start. I'm very happy to be back and finishing this story.

Without further ado, welcome to The Case - new and approved. Happy reading. This story is almost 500 pages long in a Google Doc that is taking up so much storage on my poor laptop, so you guys have your reading cut out for you.

-Harper

TL;DR: I took a break from writing and took down all of my stories to focus on my mental health, but now I have plans to finish The Case and upload the entirety of it on here. (I don't know yet if the rest of my stories will get reposted as well, because some of them are rather embarrassing to look back on). Thanks for reading.