I travel a lot, speaking to students all over the UK and beyond, and I've found something. Sometimes to get the audience hooked I'll present a cute little something that's odd, unexpected, or counter-intuitive. Many of the students light up wanting to know more.
But others find their intuition challenged and get very defensive. The result is that they are completely turned off, unwilling to engage. For them I need to take a step back and show that there is ordinary stuff that is of itself intriguing - challenging and fun.
It sounds like you needed to be given more structure, more development, more flow. It's there, but most school teachers don't know about it.
My wife says the impression she was left with from school was that math is just a bag of rules with no unifying theme. The "bag of tricks" is a similar problem.
I hope you're now starting to see the beauty and elegance that comprises the main body, as opposed to the cute wrinkles.
I'd welcome an email from you if you're interested. If you reply to this we'll work out a way to get in touch.