u/No-Landscape9464

So, I know maladaptive daydreaming is bad, but I genuinely don't know how I'm supposed to lose it without completely changing who I am. Daydreaming is how I cope with anxiety, with my unhappiness with life. I thought maybe it was a recent issue, but I think back to elementary days and I'd sit on the swings at recess and close my eyes and swing, thinking of anything to pass the time. I do the same thing now. If I'm walking or riding in a moving car, I daydream. It's comfort. It's been around so long, I think I will be lost without it. I've tried to get rid of my music and screens before to trigger it less and that ended with me talking to myself and voicing out conversations that weren't real. I don't know how to change or if I want to, because then I change my coping mechanism and my way of feeling emotion and the only thing that's kept me going so long. I'm stumped. I want to change, but I'm scared. I'm going to be scared without it. The world is terrifying, and I'm a loser with no social skills and I know that the economy is bad and the environment is crumbling and holy shit maybe I should just stay inside my head. It's all I am. I genuinely am nothing outside of the world in my head.

One thing I've been thinking about is how the gang would've turned out if they were socs instead of greasers.

It's an interesting AU/Fanfiction idea, at least to me, but I can't find anything online about it. Obviously the socs are privileged, and to take a bunch of characters shaped around their poverty and make them the very thing that targets them is HEAVY, but that's what makes it interesting.

It would both completely change who they are while they've still got their character. You know? Dallas would be dangerous and violent in a way that would likely lead to him being like Bob, and Ponyboy would still be the dreamy outsider who doesn't quite fit in (kind of like Cherry but not exactly).

If Two-bit hadn't seen so much at a young age, to forget how to cry and move on from trauma with humor, how would he cope?

Would Johnny be jumped by the greasers or would it never happen?

Would the gang too become cold and unfeeling?

Cherry says herself that socs are fake. Nobody is ever really happy and they're always chasing the next thing. There's the pressure to be perfect, to be cool..

I don't know it's interesting to me. Does anyone else think about this?