A BRAVE sex-change Greenock woman told today how decades of inner torment drove her to five suicide attempts before she finally transitioned — after 14 years as a married dad-of-three.

Natalie Rachael Gale used to be a muscle-bound 18-stone man named Matthew but says she had always felt like she was a female in the wrong body from the age of four.

The 46-year-old, who once dangled from beneath the Erskine Bridge whilst at her lowest ebb, has now written a book — ‘Being Tom’ — which is based on her personal experiences.

And despite a broken marriage and the fact that her three children now live nearly 10,000 miles away in Australia with their mum, Natalie insists that she has ‘never been happier’.

The 6ft tall blonde — who has spent £50,000 on her full transition — told the Tele: “I tried to do the right thing and got married and had kids but things just got to the point where it was too much for me.

“I became an alcoholic and I was constantly depressed because I was fighting inner demons with all the gender stuff.

“My youngest child was two at the time, and I had one who was seven and the other 11.

“Things just reached the point where my wife and I were arguing all the time and she just left, she just went. But she didn’t know anything about what I was going through because I didn’t tell her.” Natalie — who was brought up in Edinburgh and moved to Greenock in 2009 — revealed that she ‘spiralled further downwards’ after the break-up and was sectioned by doctors in a psychiatric unit after her Erskine Bridge episode.

The former primary school teacher and youth hostel manager said: “Growing up through my teenage years, my formative years, it was a constant battle with myself.

“The suicide rate in transgender people is about 50 per cent.

“And this was a path I was going down.

“I would have been dead if I didn’t do something positive about the way I was feeling.

“I tried to kill myself about five times. I used pills.

“At one point I went and hung off the Erskine Bridge. I hung for half-an-hour underneath the Erskine Bridge but I just couldn’t let go.” Natalie’s fictional Amazon Kindle e-book centres on two characters, Tom and Rose, who represent the formerly competing sides of herself. She said: “I opted to try to live what many people would say is a ‘normal life’.

“The majority of people who have gender dysphoria do try to do that — and many of them get to my sort of age and find that they can’t do it anymore.

“I found writing the book extremely cathartic. It helped me a lot.

“I had been sectioned for a week at Gartnaval. I just thought then, ‘I’m going to have to tell someone about what I’m going through’.” Natalie told how she lived as a woman for a full year without any hormone treatment — and suffered a torrent of abuse — before finally starting the physical process of change on her 40th birthday.

She said: “It was a kind of present to myself, I was thinking that if I live til I’m 80 then I’ll have had half and half, and that would be fair to myself. It was a massive change, absolutely massive. I had to live for 12 months as completely female but without any treatment at all.

“That was hard because I’m quite big, but you have to do it just to test your commitment to it. I had counselling, but that was all.” Natalie added: “In my mind I was a woman but bodily I was still a man and it was tough because people stare at you, I’ve had abuse shouted at me in the street, people have spat at me. It was dreadful.

“I was living in Balmore in East Dunbartonshire at that time.

“I then went on to hormone patches and they start to change your body and form breast tissue.

“I have fully transitioned now.

“I also had facial surgery out in Spain in 2010, to feminise my face, and I had my final gender surgery in 2011.

“I did it all privately. If I had got it done on the NHS I wouldn’t have got facial surgery and I’d probably still be waiting for my gender surgery.

“I’d say I’ve spent somewhere approaching £50,000 in total.” Natalie travelled to Australia as a pre-surgery man in 2008 to see his children Cameron, now 17, Claire, 14, and Andrew, 11.

She said: “My kids are fine, they’re absolutely fine. It was tough for them at the start but they call me Natalie now, not mum or dad.

“Before my surgery I’d put my happiness at one out of 10 but now it’s 10 every day.” But asked how her former wife, Sheena, is about the situation, Natalie replied: “Well...we talk but it’s not brilliant.” She added: “My message is a positive one.

“I would say to others who are like me, just try and live your dream, it’s possible.

“If I can do it anyone can. I was 18-stone when I started to change and I was muscular. I was a big guy, I worked out and played sport. I’m now 13 stone and I’m loving life.” Natalie — who now works as a cook at a Tesco supermarket outwith Inverclyde — said: “I identify with Kellie Maloney in Big Brother. I think what she has done is incredibly brave because she was someone who was always in the public limelight.

“I kind of feel like I’ve hidden away for six years while I’ve been doing it. But now I’m saying I’m a woman, and I always have been in my own mind. The surgery has just fixed the problem.” Natalie’s ‘Being Tom’ book — which has no transgender characters — is currently available on Amazon Kindle, priced £2.49.

She said: “I’ve sold around 400 so far but I need to get up to around 4,000 sales and then it will actually go into print. I finally feel I’ve come through the process and have the life I was always meant for.”