having bracket in front of an item

Question

I want to have an enumerate item which is surrounded by brackets. Something like this

1. [Initialization]

but surrounding text with [ and ] makes it center aligned.

Answer 1

I don't know why that would center it, but you really should write

\item\relax[Initialization]

in order for LaTeX not to think you have an optional argument for \item.

Answer 2

I don't know what you mean by centered, but [..] following an \item is interpreted as optional parameter to the \item.

You could use \item{} [Initialization].

It should not be centered. Unless you put \[ and \] around it, which makes it a math formula and the letters are interpreted as variables and not text.