May I offer some unsolicited advice.

1. Your damage output is as important if not more important than "getting gud". The more damage you do, the fewer attacks you have to dodge. That's kind of the secret to all these Souls games.

2. Damage output and damage mitigation come from stacking many small, incremental bonuses. The most important upgrade for damage output is upgrading your weapon with ores. Pick one weapon (eg. Longsword) and invest all ores into it. Any weapon is viable for the whole game as long as you upgrade it. Don't be afraid to commit ores into your chosen weapon as you will eventually have an unlimited supply.

3. It's possible to suicide-run into dangerous areas for powerful items since you don't lose items upon death. You can collect mid and high-tier ores this way even at low level.

4. It's perfectly okay to farm exp from higher level, non-bosses. It's low risk since you'll be near a rest site. A good example is killing Vulgar Militiamen from the Farum Greatbridge site in the most northeast area of Caelid. You can horse yourself there ignoring everything. There are plenty of ideal spots that people have found, just look them up.

5. If you're still having trouble, do each step in the following video as you see fit. Notice that most of these improvements are obtained by acquiring items, and not obtained by leveling up. https://youtu.be/GYI5Z3jhKB4