Buying Puts straight

So yes, I'm a noob. I've gotten the memo that selling calls and puts exposes you to 'unlimited risk' though this seems to be debateable, so OK, dumped that idea for the time being.

Heard that buying straight calls and puts is amateur hour, or I should do this in concert with selling, but I dove in anyway, because it seemed straightforward. Of course it is not, but nothing bad has happened yet, but I am thinking it's kind of stupid.

So I bought a put on a $3.50 stock to go to $2.50 and it's a bit of a turd, and yes, why bother with such a small price range. I've built an earnings database that cycles quarterly, and I've gotten to know a lot of companies since I've been trading a while, just not options. So my put goes ITM today, and I'm thinking well at least I get $100 right? Granted it expires in two days, but I don't want to wait until it goes back OTM, right?

So I hit my target, I should get my x payoff between where I bought and the strike price, right? Wall St says phu no. The broker tells me if this option goes to expiration, I'm obligated to cover the shares, and this stock has a high borrow fee, so I could get screwed. Plus, since the put is near expiration, it's essentially worthless. I sold the contract for what I bought it for. I'm supposed to make money when it drops BELOW the strike price. What a bunch of charlatans AGAIN. Couldn't just make it a straight normal bet, no, gotta make it all florid bs. No, I'm not bitter, and I'm committed to the cause, and doing OK with other strategies. I thought this options thing would be cool, but this is nonsense. I have to protect myself from successful puts? OK, masters of the universe.

Anyway, I clearly need to do more research. I have noticed that some of my calls/puts do much better weeks in advance and I should just unload them then. But then what's the point of going to expiration? The entire point is the small leverage, so I don't have to buy the shares and hold them for weeks, just to exercise them. Same thing on the calls. If my call goes ITM and expires. I have to buy all those shares to sell them or call the broker and they'll do something special.

I wanted to buy puts, because I don't want to risk selling short, although for some stable companies, selling calls to bet on down moves may not be the end of the world.

So rake me over the coals, tell me what I'm missing or ways to get out when you do go ITM. By selling an ITM contract, it seems like I just sold someone the ability to make $100 off of my $10. It's not that big a deal, but it's weird. I hit the strike before the time, and yet, it's not worth anything? Then why is there even a market for this thing?

Also, the prices of these puts reflect a normal expectation of when a company might go down around earnings, if it's overbought. So you buy a strike for a major move down and the expiration even a day, couple days etc after earnings, and yet even if you hit that, it doesn't matter, because the option is almost expired? And am I supposed to pick strikes that are midpoint and higher so the move to ITM is deeper, since this guy implied ITM is the only time the option starts paying? OK, so then a bunch of the strikes should cost $1 because they're literally worthless. There's an incongruity to how the pricing is set up vs the payoff. I know this is generally a given in this arena, but this seems kind of excessive.

The straight calls have made more sense, although the best one or two I should have sold 2 weeks before expiration, because their price was going up rapidly, and then they didn't make the strike by expiration and ended up worthless. Of course, the one call I had go ITM was a surprise SPY pivot, and I was fumbling and sold it. I've heard one online guy say he takes his options to expiration as a point of pride, so clearly he knows how to actually exercise them.