It's not just Columbus Day—it's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Day, which is, to be clear, not a Hallmark holiday suggesting you call your least stable former flame. The new CW musical comedy series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend premieres tonight at 8 P.M. (right before Jane the Virgin comes back). The show, which follows a lawyer who moves from New York to California in pursuit of her camp days crush, was cocreated by and stars Rachel Bloom, whose hilarious self-produced music videos put her on the map. Fans of the cheeky vids—"You Can Touch My Boobies," about a 12-year-old boy's hormonal fantasy, has 3.6 million views—surely won't be surprised at how easily Bloom nails the habits of attraction. And, as it turns out, she's just as real about romance offscreen. The artist who calls Crazy Ex-Girlfriend "an emotional autobiography" talked frankly with us about the nuttiest things she's done for love—and the ways love makes us all nuts.

On the way "stalkerish" behavior can be misunderstood, like that of Bloom's country-crossing character, Rebecca: [People want to say that] she's just a crazy character who's stalking someone—but in actuality, that's not how things like this start. It starts with a ton of self-denial. Then, once you get some sort of hint that there may be something there with the other person, you're like, "I love you I love you I love you." But it's only then. No one's going to be like "I love you I love you I love you" before something happens. Rebecca is very much an example of what, I think, a lot of people go through."

On the inspiration behind Rebecca's journey: In high school—and this is kind of where the show comes from—the guy I was in love with lived in the city next to me. And I would tell myself these lies of wanting to go to Glendora, which was where he lived. I'd think like, "You know, I just want to go to Glendora. Because it's like cool." [laughing] But I was lying to myself. I literally lied to myself in my own diary! There's an entry in my diary that says, like, "Dear Diary: Today I went to Glendora to see the orchestra/hang with David." I didn't want to admit I was in love with him.

On her destructive, long-term childhood crush: "He was the bad boy class clown—like, he cursed. I was this goody two-shoes and in second grade, the teacher put him next to me so I'd set a good example. Instead, what happened was he would make me laugh, and I would get distracted. From then on I f—ing loved him. We started to become friends, but I was this weird drama kid who was actually made fun of a lot, and he was trying to be cool, so he started to put me down and make fun of me. He would be like, "You're so unattractive. You're super ugly." It was weird. But the more he made fun of me, the more I loved him. By the way: he has [since] profusely apologized.