Just an FYI - the bars do not show the strength of your 3G or 1X connection, it only shows the strength of your cell connection. But since you have full bars, you should have no problem sending text messages.
And as far as this - I have never seen anyone have most of the issues that you are having, so maybe it just doesn't agree with your phone for some reason. I had a similar thing happen with Apex. Everyone said Apex was the best ROM around, but on my phone it was slow, and had so many issues that I couldn't deal with it for more than 30 minutes. I went to another ROM for a while, and tried to go back to Apex, figured maybe something happened while installing it, and got the same results. My phone just didn't like the Apex ROM for some reason, even though everyone else had amazing results with it.
Sometimes individual phones don't have the same results as other people's phones for whatever reason. But most of the community that is running this ROM is having very few issues, and very good battery life. If you are experiencing something different, maybe you should try another ROM. Maybe try coming back to CM in the future and see if you have better results then.