Matchmaking Reset? (normals)

First off, I dunno if this is the right area to post, but I'm gonna anyway. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

I'm just curious if anyone else has experienced this before. I used to play a ton of normal games, and I guess I must have been pretty good. But after several years of teaching, going back to school for another degree, playing ARAM instead, etc etc, I'm trash. And my rank reflects it (Bronze 1). And that's okay. I know I'm bad but I like to play the game.

But I'm CONSTANTLY getting placed in games with golds, plats, and above. And they just step all over me. I'm getting angry pings from my team asking why I'm doing what I'm doing, and I don't have a response because I actually don't know (nor, if I'm being honest, do I care to learn that much. I'm here to play the game and have fun, but I don't want to take the time to learn everything because I have other things to do, and it's a huge time commitment). It's just 20-ish long angry minutes for them and I don't really get to have fun either.

Someone said I need to just play more games to get my MMR down, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a better way? Just because it's really annoying.

And yeah, I could just play ranked. But again there's a stigma, where at least in normals people can be talked down to not care ("it's just norms, you're learning, mmr is weird, that's okay"). In ranked, everything is so serious and sometimes you just want to move around the map as a goon squad rather than push because a wave is in a certain place and then you'll get the win and everyone else can go next match because this is their promos and ranked is important. So yeah, I don't want to ruin someone else's ranked game just because I want to learn new champs or try something new.