Will You Marry Me?

I think I'm ready  to tell the story of my two marriage proposals.  This is actually very weird for me to talk about, especially since I consider the guy a friend of mine.  Ever since this whole thing went down, I've tried to keep some distance between us, so hopefully he won't try for a third time.
I first started talking to him years ago.  He would ask me about movies or what websites to visit or whatever.  He seemed nice enough.  Then he asked me to hang out sometime, so I said maybe some day after my shift, we could sit and talk in the library.  It seemed harmless enough.  I mentioned it to one of my co-workers.

"So I'm gonna hang out with that guy, you know the one who comes in here all the time, with the backpack, and he's always really red?"

She knew exactly who I meant and proceeded to tell me that he is not only schizophrenic, but bipolar as well.  Yikes.  She told me more about him and some of the specific issues he deals with.  I decided that I would still hang out with him and just see how it went because he seemed to be a pretty lonely dude, and that made me kind of sad.  It went well, he was definitely a strange guy, but really nice and also very apologetic if he ever said anything he considered to be out of line.  One time, he wrote me an apology letter because he thought he was being too flirtatious with me.  I don't even remember what he said to me, so it wasn't even a big deal, but to him it was.

I have all kinds of stuff he's given me over the years, mostly artwork and poetry, with the occasional letter or CD of stuff he decided to burn for me.  So eventually he invited me over to his apartment, and anytime that happened I wouldn't stay long and always had a reason to leave early if I needed to.  So one time, I was there, and we were talking and watching Youtube videos because we're cool like that, and, out of nowhere, he asked if he could kiss me.  I turned about thirty shades of red and managed to say "Uh...no.  No, I don't think that would be a good idea.  At all."  I left not too long after that.  It just got worse from there.  When I saw him at the library again, we had this really weird conversation.

He said "So, I bought some bling earlier today."
"Oh yeah?"  This struck me as weird because he's not the kind of person who wears "bling," or even says things like "bling," for that matter.
"Yeah.  I bought a diamond engagement ring.  I was hoping you would come over tomorrow, so I can ask you to marry me.  What do you think?"
Naturally, I thought he was joking, so I laughed and just said "Yeah sure whatever."

He wasn't joking.

I didn't go over to his apartment, obviously, but he called me the next day and left me these really long messages.  The first one was about us getting married and spending our lives together.  The second one was more along the lines of NEVER MIND, NEVER MIND, IT WAS A BAD IDEA, I'M RETURNING THE RING, SORRY.  So weird.  Then I checked my email and found this ridiculous, overblown message from him (from before he changed his mind, of course).  It was really uncomfortable to read.  He kept going on about our "relationship" and how he couldn't wait for me to be his wife and all this weird religious stuff.  I still get the chills when I think about it...

So that was that.  I never actually said anything to him, but I guess ignoring a person gets the message through.  He stopped coming in on the days that I worked for a really long time.  Months later though, he came in and talked to me but it was excruciatingly awkward, at least for me.  But we started talking more, and eventually things got back to normal. 

About a year later from the first proposal, he came in one day and was acting strange around me, which for him is kind of the usual.  But he was being really short with me and not smiling so I knew something was up.  Then he asked me for help finding a book in the back, and at that point I knew something bad was going to happen, just from the way he was talking to me and acting.  We walked over and he started looking at books, but then turned to me and said "I need to know this right now, so that I can move on with my life, either way, but I just want to know if you will take my hand in marriage.  Will you marry me?" 
Talk about being caught off guard.  I mean, I knew something was up, but really?  A SECOND TIME?  I looked at him and said "no."  And he just said "Ok.  Thank you.  Ok."  And walked away.  And that was that.  I didn't see him for a long time after that, too.  Just recently he came in on a day that I was covering for someone else, so it wasn't my usual day to be there and he started talking to me, I think mostly out of nervousness.  But it was alright.  Pretty soon things got back to how they used to be.  We're cool right now, he likes it when I recommend books for him to read and he tries to give me advice on how to take better care of myself because I pretty much never sleep.  He's always offering to bring me coffee, too, which is nice.

After that second time he asked me though, I have to tell you, I was 99% ready to just quit my job and get the hell out of the library.  It just wasn't worth it to me anymore.  I'm glad I hung in there though.