Welcome to the forum Suzanne.
There is a sticky at the top of this section of the forum called the beginners resource center. It has links to articles on fishless tank cycling, beginning fish stocking suggestions, equipment needs and lots of similar subjects. Perhaps it can give you a few hints on a direction to start so that we can help with the details.
The broad brush approach is easy. You need a tank, heater, filter, chemistry testing kit (the kind with test tubes), fish food, dechlorinator for new water, a bucket that is only used for the fish, a gravel vacuum / siphon thing, water and some day some fish. To get the tank ready for the fish you set up the tank, get the filter running and bring the temperature to about 80F, 29C. Then you add some pure ammonia until the test kit tells you that you are at about 4 or 5 ppm of ammonia. Once you have done that much, you have weeks to wait until you get any fish so there is lots of time to look into interesting fish. During the wait you test water, add more ammonia as needed and continue your fish research. When the tank is cycled, criteria are in the fishless cycling article, you do an enormous water change and get your fist fish.