Elementary school. My earliest math memory is from the start of 1st grade, we were learning addition with them red/yellow counter thingies, and the girl sitting next to me started crying cause she couldn't figure it out, and I remember wondering what the big deal was, since it all seemed pretty straightforward and easy to me.

And then again in 3rd grade, when we started learning multiplication, and I, the adhd class clown screw up kid who never did his homework and would get kicked out of class and have to miss recess, noticed and corrected my teacher's mistake for the first time ever. We learned about Fibonacci's sequence and I thought it was so satisfyingly cool.

It was around this time it began to occur to me that no might be good at this, and math became my favorite subject. Fast forward through 3 years of middle school of me coasting by on, in hindsight, pure talent, and developing no work ethic. Then came high school, and algebra 2, and I never felt behind, but I got a C or D or something on algebra 2 and had to retake it over the summer, where I went on to completely and thoroughly ace every assignment, while blatantly sleeping through lectures. Throughout high school, math became challenging for the first time, not because I couldn't grasp the concepts, but because for the first time, math was no longer a series of interesting patterns and lessons on how to do operations and solve puzzles, but a more conceptual subject, where things built upon each other, and required a broader understanding of how things fit together, and how/when/why to apply the different concepts.

For the first time, instead of me kicking ass in math, math was kicking my ass. I was getting bad grades and my teachers were telling me I wasn't able to keep up with this. Imagine, me, who seemingly always had a talent for this, a feeling of entitlement that I was a master at this subject, being told I wasn't suited for this. I was rejected from the accelerated program that would allow me to take calc 2 before graduation. For the first time since elementary school, I was no longer in the highest math class for my grade, and had to take precalc in the summer to get myself caught back up.

Math had gone from my talent and specialty to a challenge, and something that had started to elude me by the time high school ended. It went from something that was cool and friendly and familiar that I would use to apply to amuse and entertain myself, to something more formidable, unfamiliar, and menacing that was difficult to get a grasp of and control. I struggled to grasp calculus, and my years of being a poor student, coasting by on talent and failing to develop a work ethic, had finally caught up to me.

This trend continued into uni. I failed out of the engineering program at my school 2 semesters before completion, and was unallowed to continue. I wanted to continue in this field professionally, as the skills I had acquired already made me employable and I enjoyed it, but I would have to choose a different major. I decided to take it back to basics and went with Math full time (I was already doing the minor previously), as I felt there was some unfinished business there for me, an unsolved challenge lurking that finally needed to be addressed, conquered, and beaten into submission.

Didn't quite turn out that way, I'm happily content to call it a tie. I finished my degree, but not without significant challenges. I was knocked onto my ass a ton, but also able to have moments of brilliance again, where things clicked and fell into place, and clicked and I was able to make months worth of progress in a matter of hours, all the way up to the final hours of the final days in my final semester, where my ability to pass and graduate was in the balance, and I was able to succeed - a fitting way to end my academic career I would say.

So to answer your question, I've loved math as long as I can remember, and it's been a rocky relationship along the way. Ive learned to develop an appreciation for the vastness of the subject, and accepted that I'll never come close to mastering it (academia is not for me at all), but I'm also confident and content with how I've been able to harness it and what I've been able to achieve through it along the way.