The story sounds familiar...
I started college in Sept 1963 and dropped out the day Kennedy was assassinated, Nov 22, 1963. Correlation, not causation... I just wasn't ready for college.
I started college again in '69 and graduated in '73, took a couple of years off and then finished my Master's in '76. I never looked back. Electronics, and the degrees, were really a hobby plus they paid the cost of admission to a professional career. Mostly, I worked in electrical and project management.
I left out the bit where I spent a couple of years in the Army and that allowed me to use the GI Bill to pay for college. I still have some of the $8 text books! But undergrad was a night program and I was working 40-60 hours per week as an electrician. There wasn't a lot of spare time...
Today, I would recommend going to community college long enough to get an AS degree in something and then transferring to an in-state college to finish the last two years. Community college used to be considered something of a joke. Not any more! Around here (California), the material is deep and thorough. I've been helping my grandson with Calc I (finally over) so I'm pretty current on what is going on. The key is to get the AS degree rather than just barely enough transfer units to get into a state college. It's a step in the process. You HAVE the AS degree in your hannd, there's no taking that away.
Having a degree is a binary thing. You either have one or you don't and there is no middle ground. You can have all the knowledge equivalent to having a degree, heck you could be better educated than most graduates, but it doesn't mean a thing when your resume' is trashed due to no degree. And that is really the way it is, degree or no degree - binary.
There's an enormous amount of help on the Internet. Khan Academy, Desmos.com, Symbolab.com, CalcWorkshop.com (costs money and worth every penny), 3Blue1Brown videos, and so on. Help is nearly endless. There's even one site (costs money) that has all of the homework solutions for a number of popular Calculus texts including Stewart's.
It doesn't matter which branch of engineering you sign up for, the lower division (4 semesters) all have math starting at Calc I and progressing through Calc III and finally Differential Equations. This is some serious math and there's no time to study Pre-Calc and you simply won't make it through Calc without Pre-Calc. At our local community college, Pre-Calc is a two semester (1 year) course all by itself and it doesn't count toward the 4 semesters of math in the AS program. Consider it a cost of entry and plan to add a year to community college. Three years - minimum. Plus 2 years at the state level (probably turns out to be 3). Figure 6 years to get through college these days unless you are one of the very bright young kids that aced AP classes.
Financing is always a problem but if you only spend two years at an in-state institution, receive some grants, it might not be terribly expensive. It won't be nearly as expensive as not going.
STEM programs aren't for the casually inclined. You need to take 12-15 units per semester and, at some point, all of them are going to be hard classes. Figure 2 or 3 hours (5 hours if you are having trouble) of homework per week, per unit. Plus an hour per week per unit of class time (except for labs, they are 1 unit and take LOTS of hours). A 15 unit load will require at least 60 hours per week of class and homework. Maybe more! That's 8 hours per day, 5 days plus a couple of hours off on Sunday. This is no joking matter, people horribly underestimate what it takes to get a STEM degree.
Hint: Try to spread out your General Education courses such that you have one of these easy courses every semester. That way you will only have 2 hard classes plus 1 easy class. You'll get the idea...
Hint: Talk to a counselor at the community college and select a program. Then build a map of the courses you need in the order you have to take them. Build a map on a piece of project board sticking 3x5 cards on the board for each class. You order them by their pre-requisites - essentially the order in which you have to take them. You will have 3 or 4 columns (one of which will be all math) depending on how many units you plan to take per semester. This is your map! Keep it handy! Pull off (or cross out) the classes as you finish them.
Hint: It doesn't get easier as you get older. Get started!