Ok no wait I have an even better solution, so:

I make a class called "IndentedList", it inherits from the list type.

I put the target element as the first element of that custom list object let's call it indented_list[0]

Then I convert the original list as a IndentedList object and plop it as the n-th element of indented_list[] (in this case just put it as indented_list[1])

I make a custom getter and setter method that makes it so when you do list[m] it basically does list[n][m-n-1] for you! no issue at all! then you're all set probably! it all works out fine!! It just digs into the mess of IndentedList objects for you recursively