In the labyrinth of memory, Eleven quietly claimed its place as my favorite number. The arrival wasn't marked by a loud revelation, but rather a silent proclamation that it was there to stay, my chosen number, whose significance transcends the ordinary.
As a kid, a familiar mantra echoed in school competitions "It's not about winning; it's about participating." I never liked that idea. Striving for the top always made sense to me and the pursuit of “perfection” was something worth fighting for. Number one was good until I thought, "Why settle for just one ‘1’ when I can have two of them?” It might sound like a kid reasoning, but big ideas often emerge from seemingly trivial thoughts. Consider Newton and his falling apple or Pythagoras with his sticks. Great things start tiny, then they just follow the evolution of our ideas.

Eleven is the first number we can’t count on our fingers. Like reflection, which can be seen only in a mirror. Eleven is the mirrored number. Its duality mirrors the relationship between joy and sorrow, light and darkness, and it extends to people’s souls, finding the most primitive element, pain. If there's one thing that I’ve learned, due to a lack of a father figure in my life, is that painful feeling of rejection, because I ended up hating my own DNA and trying to "go well" until exhaustion in the hope of being at peace with myself. I remember one day me and my pain stood in front of the mirror, trying to understand why I wasn't enough to be chosen. The mirror only reflects the external appearance, so I settled for that. The first questions were "maybe I’m not pretty", "I have to change my hair”. I was looking for change, trying to improve that lopsided eyeliner and that hair. That day, while looking at the clock, waiting for a “happy birthday” that would never come, I found the clock displaying 11:11, and it went on for days and later months. “Just some coincidences” I used to say, but then, my idea of life came into play. Completely confused and childish, stolen from poems and tearful movies that in the end I don’t hate that much as I say. I learnt that those sequences of numbers are called "angelic numbers", signals sent from the Universe itself. That day, the Eleven, with its simple shape, was there, catapulting me into the reality of a Universe where I don’t need to be perfect.

Now, when Eleven appears, I see it as a reminder that intuition is always present, even in the most unexpected place and time. With it I found the real me again and started asking myself “What makes me really happy?”, without thinking how others see me.
Does happiness really depend on some bangs? Humans are beings based on concrete, something that can be achieved immediately, but now I can say that taking a journey inside myself was much easier than becoming an expert in make-up or clothing. It took me just a few hours to understand most of my thoughts and their origin. Improvement began when I saw myself in my inner mirror. And to be honest, when I really started to know myself, I hated it. I hated my past, my choices, my personality.

Then I started joking about it, defusing my fragility, laughing at those tears I once hated. I started holding hands when I was scared, handing me a tissue when I cried. I’ve learned to forgive myself. Completely, despite everything. And it is only when I learnt to forgive myself that I started forgiving life.