New to manual questions

I am really struggling to get the hang of driving without feeling like I’m killing my car. I have a 2016 gmc canyon with 21,000 mi. I’ve been learning on it the last week but it feels like I’m not perfect and I’m hoping I’m not hurting the car through this learning. My first question: when you take your foot off the clutch, do you pause at the bite point? Ik everything I do wears the clutch but I feel kind of obsessive with clutch wear. I want to not pause but if I don’t I’ll either stall or rev too high and then cause worse damage. Just not sure what the proper method is. Or if I’ll acquire the muscle memory (got like 14 hours down now).