marcusbehrens:
but it is not working...it only got worse.
Marcus, if it was not working, how could it get worse? Such descriptions are useless to us, we cannot see what you can see. You must describe what happens precicely, or we won't be able to help.
The esp outputs are 3.3V. Does the display require 5V signals?
Perhaps you should try your digitalWrite() code on a 5V Arduino. This will slow down the refreshing of the display and make it flicker, but at least you can test your converted code before you try it on the esp.
Paul