I don’t know if I should...

I really like this guy I went to hush school with and I wanna ask him to be my boyfriend but the only thing is that he’s in the army and he is going to be going back to North Carolina on the 17th and he said he’s getting deployed for 9 months... we have talked before and then he wasn’t ready and didn’t think I could handle a long distance relationship but I believe I could because I really like him and I wanna be with him what should I do?