Loving Something Back Into Existence

The Color They Tried to Erase
Three years ago, I started following a woman on TikTok whose entire life seemed to revolve around a crayon.
Not makeup tutorials.
Not travel hacks.
Not viral dances.
A crayon.
Specifically, a color called Dandelion from the Crayola box. That soft golden yellow so many of us used without thinking when we were kids. The color of sun-warmed sidewalks and lazy afternoons. The color that quietly filled in the parts of drawings that needed warmth but not attention.
In 2017, Crayola discontinued it.
Just like that. Gone. Replaced. Retired. A corporate decision made somewhere in a conference room by people who probably never imagined anyone would care.
But she cared.
She talked about how Dandelion had been her favorite color as a child. How losing it felt strangely personal. And instead of shrugging and moving on like the rest of the world expected, she did something beautifully stubborn.
She started collecting it.
One crayon became ten. Ten became hundreds. Then thousands. She hunted down old boxes, promotional displays, forgotten merchandise. Anything that carried that color. Her videos weren’t angry or bitter. They were tender. Almost protective. Like she was keeping watch over something the world had decided was no longer necessary.
And week after week, year after year, she reminded people: just because something is removed doesn’t mean it stops mattering.
I watched her collection grow the way you watch a garden grow. Slowly. Quietly. Faithfully.
Then this week, something unexpected happened.
Crayola sent her a package. Inside was an announcement: Dandelion is coming back. Permanently restored to the crayon box.
I’ll admit it. I got emotional watching her open it. Not because of nostalgia for a childhood art supply, but because of what the moment represented.
A corporation erased something because it believed the world had moved on.
One person refused to agree.
And eventually, the thing they tried to erase returned.
That story has been sitting with me ever since, because the truth is, Dandelion isn’t really about crayons.
It’s about what happens when institutions decide something no longer has value.
History is full of those moments.
Communities labeled inconvenient.
Voices deemed too loud.
Bodies considered unacceptable.
Identities pushed quietly out of sight.
The gay community has lived this story more than once. People of color have lived it for generations. People with disabilities know it intimately. Entire groups of human beings have been treated like discontinued colors. Phased out. Replaced. Removed from the official box as if visibility itself were optional.
But erasure is a decision made on paper. Existence is something else entirely.
You can remove a name from packaging. You can stop producing something. You can pretend it no longer fits the brand you want the world to see.
What you cannot do is make it lose its meaning.
Dandelion never stopped being beautiful just because it disappeared from store shelves. Kids still remembered it. Artists still missed it. One woman loved it enough to refuse the idea that its story was finished.
And that’s the part that matters.
Because survival, especially for communities like ours, has never depended on permission. It has depended on memory. On visibility. On people who keep showing up and saying, “No, this still belongs here.”
Every gathering we host, every connection we make, every time someone dares to live honestly in a world that sometimes prefers neat categories and quiet conformity, we are doing the same work she did.
We are keeping colors alive.
The world may try to simplify itself by removing what makes it complicated. Corporations rebrand. Institutions rewrite priorities. Culture shifts and sometimes forgets the very people who helped shape it.
But disappearance is not the same as absence.
Value does not vanish because recognition does.
Watching that woman celebrate the return of a crayon reminded me of something deeply hopeful: love has endurance. Community has memory. And persistence has a way of rewriting decisions made far away from the people they affect.
You cannot erase something simply by deciding it no longer matters.
Not a color.
Not a community.
Not a person.
Because somewhere, someone is still holding the box open, saving a space, waiting for it to come back home.

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