Guest Contributor: He Lost a Planet

Jake Steinberg contemplates truth, justice and the American way...

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There are two ways to make yourself matter. You can be different. Or you can be hurt. That’s it. The job interview, the date, the caption, the post, the college application essay, the therapy intake form.

You present your scar, and others decide if it’s valuable enough. Friendships form not over shared values or inside jokes or joy, but damage. Pain is the anchor. And you learn: if you want to be held, you must first be seen as broken.

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Pain is the easiest way to prove you’re real.

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I grew up in a house where the TV was always on. My parents watched Desperate Housewives and the women on that show spoke in a high, polished register — clipped vowels and careful intonation, like they were auditioning for a character whose first attribute was "well-adjusted." My mom didn’t talk like that. Her voice had more gravity. More curve. It sounded like someone who knew what she was saying before she said it. I noticed other kids’ moms spoke like the women on TV, too. Bright, a little too clean, as if they’d practiced. Weirdos or fakers — like their kids, surely. But my mom sounded real. Like home.

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In fourth grade, Bryan said my mom had an accent. I said she didn’t. That’s just her voice. But I definitely could tell the difference. And I was learning not just what people sound like, but what standard sounds like. Who is heard without translation? Who gets to be the default?

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Somehow, the Irish kids were everywhere. They weren’t from Ireland and neither were their parents or their grandparents. But they never had to explain anything. They wore green on Saint Patrick’s Day like they invented the color. Irishness meant something to them. It gave them personality. A story to tell. The Italian kids were the same — just another Mad Libs identity for white kids who wanted to matter. They brought spaghetti to the potluck and called it heritage. The same cardboard box we all bought from Kroger.

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Jewish families always told me that I wasn’t really Jewish because my mom, a Latina immigrant, was raised Catholic. Aaron’s parents told me this at dinner, smiling like it was a favor. I didn’t ask how Aaron’s mother — born to no Jewish parents, raised in another church, bearing none of the physical traits that strangers used to decide I was Jewish — had managed to count for more. I never asked, but I always wondered. Was it really my mother’s discarded religion that disqualified me? Or was it something else they saw in her? Or in me?

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“You’re not really Spanish,” someone would say to Jake Steinberg, like they’d caught him in a lie.

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There is a violence in subtraction. A theft in not being allowed to name yourself. You become the thing people decide you’re not. What’s real, what’s fake, what can be mocked. My mom’s voice. My father’s name. I was never quite legible, and no one tried to read me anyway.

When nobody reads you, you start erasing yourself just to feel legible.

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I went to a Catholic college. It was free. In the theater group, we’d gather on dorm room floors late at night and hold what felt like confession. Everyone took turns telling their worst story. A time they’d been wronged or broken or nearly lost. We received each story like communion. A few nods. Some murmured affirmations. Then the next person would go. I said nothing. I didn’t know these people well enough to hand them my sorrow. And I think a large part of me was holding out because I just wanted to have fun. But I watched how the room responded to pain. How the most damaged person became the center of gravity. The wound made you worthy.

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On the bus to a theater formal, a boy named Matt turned in his seat and said to me, "Some people think you're closed off." I asked him if he thought oversharing was a kind of shield, too. He shrugged. Turned around. That was the end of it. But I thought about it for weeks.

What is the opposite of being closed off? Is it being available, or is it being exposed? How much do you owe people? How much of yourself must you cut open to be considered honest? We live in a moment where confession stands in for connection. When saying the hard thing is confused with doing the hard work. Where every conversation begins with a diagnosis and ends in exhaustion.

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I love you. Bleed on command.

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The internet is built on this. Memoirs, TikToks, Notes App essays. The Sad Girl literary boom. The trauma dump as an art form. And the problem isn’t that people are hurting. The problem is what we do with that hurt. We wear it like a badge and use it to signal complexity. We hoard it. We monetize it. We pass it around until it stops meaning anything. The performance of pain becomes its own kind of mask, hiding the fact that many of us do not know who we are when we’re not hurting. I know this because I’ve done it. I have told stories not to be known, but to be impressive. I have led with wounds because I did not think joy was interesting enough. It works. You’re still reading.

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I work adjacent to video game media. Every year, journalists attend this industry event called Summer Game Fest. There are mixers, parties, rooftop hangs. There’s bonding. But when people write about it, all they talk about is exhaustion. The skipped meals. The lack of sleep. They mention burnout like a credential.

But I’ve been to Summer Game Fest. It’s fun. But saying it’s fun feels taboo. Like the work is easy. But here’s the thing: You could go to this conference and do your job and you could sleep. You could rest and eat. But people want the fun, and they want the narrative. They want to be the protagonist of a story where every good time has a cost.

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Our myths reflect this. Our superheroes reflect this. Superheroes are born in tragedy. Bruce Wayne watches his parents die and becomes Batman. Peter Parker loses his uncle and becomes Spider-Man. Their pain is their origin. Their trauma is their personality. We find it compelling. We call it gritty. We call it real.

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My favorite has always been Superman.

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He lost his planet. Not a parent, not a girlfriend — an entire planet. A million voices that could have been heard without translation. And somehow, that’s the one we don’t talk about as tragic. Superman isn’t compelling because of what he lost. He’s compelling because of what he chose to do anyway. He’s not haunted. He’s hopeful. He doesn't hide behind his grief. There is something more real to Superman than his pain.

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People say Superman is boring. They mean he's not tortured enough. They mean he doesn't make them feel deep. But what’s more radical than someone who chooses kindness over vengeance? What’s more subversive than someone who helps because he can, not because he has something to prove? We have no script for quiet conviction. No language for a hero who doesn’t need to be in pain to be good. Superman reminds us that power is not made meaningful by suffering. It’s made meaningful by use.

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There’s a Superman story I come back to a lot called “Blue Dot.” In it, Jonathan Kent sits in a church, struggling with doubt. His son isn’t from here — not really — and he wonders what he could possibly offer someone who fell from the stars. The reverend’s advice is simple: “Make sure your boy knows how you feel about him.” The rest of the comic is the answer. Page after page, we see Jonathan raising Clark — through the years, through the questions, through the quiet — and telling him, again and again: I love you. You are special. I’m proud of you.

And then, Clark stands at his father’s grave. He remembers. He opens his shirt. And the story carries forward. Superman catches a falling woman. He visits sick children. He shares food with people on the street. He moves through the world, doing what his father did — saying what his father said. I love you. You are special. I’m proud of you. These words are bigger than any tragedy.

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I think about the stories I’ve inherited. Jewish stories. Stories where trauma is a shield and a sword. Where suffering means righteousness. Where victimhood becomes license. I see the same logic in American exceptionalism.

I think about a post on my hometown Facebook group — an older woman urging everyone to go see a documentary called October H8te about the rise of antisemitism in America. The name alone told me everything I needed to know. It was propaganda. It flattened all Jewish pain into a single digestible fear. It asked nothing of its audience but allegiance. “This is bad because it’s happening to us.”

But I know what Jewish pain looks like. I know what Jewish hate looks like. I don’t need a movie to remind me. What bothered me was the way this woman used our pain to make herself feel important. Seen. Different. And safe. All while a genocide was happening.

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I think about how Israel does the same thing. How Jewish death becomes justification for Palestinian death. How identity becomes indemnity. Inherited trauma becomes a license to destroy. I think we’ve confused remembrance with entitlement. And I think we’re doing it on purpose.

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Superman lost a planet. He carries it in silence, like a gravity that pulls only inward. But he does the work. He helps. He keeps going. Not because he’s broken, but because he’s whole. He defies gravity. That’s the story I want. That’s the story I need. Not another ode to suffering. But a story where someone chooses to love when they could loathe. A story where someone would be just as important, just as meaningful and salient, if they hadn’t suffered at all.

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I think if I told you about the things that really hurt me, it would kill you. So I don’t. Does that make me tortured? Or just afraid you wouldn’t love me if you knew?

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Jake Steinberg

is a writer, story consultant, and video game streamer who explores storytelling craft and critical analysis in gaming culture. His essays have appeared on platforms like Critical Distance, and he’s been featured on shows such as Giant Bomb. Jake’s debut book has been acquired and is set to be published next year. You can follow his writing on Substack, watch his videos on YouTube, and catch his streams on Twitch.