How do I fix my record and progress to a regular 4 year

got rescinded from a really great California 4 year program and made the mistake of not emailing a safety right away and instead enrolling in a community college to try to take a few classes while i figured things out. I didn’t know at the time, but California has a rule that doesn’t make much sense where you have to do a full transfer once you take any classes at a community college after high school.

So I basically felt like I was trapped somewhere I very quickly realised I didn’t want to be. I moved in with family in another town that I did not get along with to put it shortly and should not have moved in with.

Felt pissed and hopeless and basically failed every class I enrolled in my first term by just not showing up once I learned I was stuck there. I took a few semesters of a lot of electives and a few transfer requirements. Now my GPA is technically a 2.5 and I have 20 transferable units. I’ve become much more musically talented, so my time here hasn’t felt like a waste necessarily.

I moved out of the shit situation this January and am living on my own now for my own sanity’s sake. Absolutely the best choice I’ve made since graduating, I’m so much happier alone.
And now I want to fix my grades and finally move to a school where I’ll be happy. But I’m scared that the damage already done will just follow me around forever and I won’t be able to transfer anywhere decent.

I also refuse to stay in this town any longer because its ridiculously expensive now that I’m living alone and I hate it here so I see no reason to pay so much to live somewhere I hate in crappy small apartments. The town is mostly retirees and 40 minutes from any other real cities. I can just barely afford it thankfully but why the hell should I?

I wish I could erase every single credit I’ve ever taken at the school good or bad and start new somewhere I choose strategically, but that doesn’t seem possible.

So being more realistic my plan right now is to retake my failed classes at another community college or online and then finish my transfer at a new school. Get good enough grades for a year, switch majors and then do a TAG to UCSB. So much failed stuff I have to retake it’ll probably take forever for me to get my grades to a point where I could transfer anywhere anyway might as well go through with the full junior year transfer. I’ve since learned all too late lower division transfers very much exist pretty much anywhere outside of california. But that one semester I screwed up so badly on still remains.

I guess I’m looking for advice, or any sort of academic forgiveness type program I’m unaware of that I could use if say I did continue on a trajectory of better grades and could explain my situation to get rid of that one awful semester I began with. But I don’t expect that. I’ve accepted my situation now and am just trying to get out and to somewhere I’ll be happy.