I've tried to play lol several times, but I find a lot of information at once and end up discouraging learning to play, is there anything I can do or just play without understanding until I get the hang of it?
The best way to learn things are to, after a match, pick out the champions you played against and don't know. Ideally you could one-by-one try them in the practice room, but if you don't have the blue essence for that, you should instead look up their abilities on the week and keep your eye peeled for if they are in a free week rotation.
Once you've learned the baseline things like what "AP", "AD", "Armor" Magic Resist", etc are you'll eventuallly come to a better understanding of how the scalings the enemy champions have will effect them.
If you are doing 1v1 lanes, I'd recommend looking on the wiki for your opponents champion just so you can sort of start theorizing what they may build, and even if you 're wrong you'll still be learning.
It takes a long time. Honestly--you just have to enjoy the process over hundreds of games. Take time playing every champion and learning their skills, damage, and cooldown. Their mechanics. Then when you play against them, you'll know it better.
There's no shortcut. It's just a game that requires a ton of knowledge.
It's why me, a previous top 200 player from S1-S3, I play now and I'm gold.
I know my mechanics are rusty. But there is just so much knowledge I don't have now. Damage values, skill descriptions, how different champions work, cooldowns, etc.
You should try to play it and absorb everything thats easy to learn. The game is changing fast and I know that it is hard to know everything when you start...
