Relocating as a person who hasn’t done it before

22 F) and my partner (23 F), live in South Carolina currently. I was born and raised here and have been dying to get out my entire life… problem is I have no idea how? I’ve never lived anywhere else and have moved only within my city.
I work in a restaurant- so you can imagine I’m not super rich, it’s decent money though… and my gf works in a grocery store (a bit worse than me pay wise but good FOR a grocery store 🤔). We pay rent and make little in savings (but I have a little)?
We have a lease that ends early next year. We also have 1 pet cat.

My dream is to become a tattoo artist. It is something I’ve been set on for years! But in SC we have laws that I wouldn’t want to start an apprenticeship under (like you can’t sell anything BUT tattoos, meaning it’s illegal to sell like stickers or any retail item… as well as other weird laws). It is my true dream job though and I want to commit to an apprenticeship loyally, apprenticeships take 1-3 years often. So I feel the need to leave the state before I can really feel like I’m heading somewhere I want to be.

We have two friends who potentially may come but that is not a given, so that adds an unknown variable.

Money is something weird, we are learning finances and saving as we go and we are still pretty young. We are trying to find my gf a better paying job maybe as a server as well but we’ve applied to many and nobody has asked to interview?

We also don’t really understand the like applying for apartments concept. Like- we applied to one locally and live there now and they wanted proof of income? Most jobs want u to have residence established? How do you get an apartment in another state if you just left your job in the other state? How do you apply for a job there with no actual place to live? Super confusing and applying to places by itself is scary.

We were looking at moving to Colorado (my gf has a lot of family there).. or Seattle? I worry about apartment prices as well aaaand we also have a pet cat that needs to be accepted! Overall this all seems really scary but I was wondering if anyone had advice on moving to another state for the first time as a first timer (particularly as a sorta broke young person)!